Today I ventured down to the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall to see their latest exhibition, Pablo Bronstein: Sketches for Regency Living, which is on from 9th June to the 25th September. It is the artist’s most ambitious exhibition to date, introducing major architectural interventions, a newly commissioned body of work as well as extraordinary original choreography.
Drawing upon London’s Regency history and that of the ICA building, Bronstein uses a wide range of media to explore his interest in architecture, from performance and drawing to installation and sculpture. The world here imagined by Bronstein is one in which past and present, Classicism and Postmodernism, are married in highly stylised and often fantastical combinations. Bronstein’s practice is as much concerned with architecture itself as with the social relations that architecture constructs. Performance and choreography can be understood as an extension of the artist’s exploration of architecture into the realm of space and action. For Bronstein, ‘Dance is another way of drawing, you mark space out, you mark territories out, and dimensions and volumes with gestures, positions of people on a plane’.
Designs for the Ornamentation of Middle Class Houses 2011
Images: Steve White
Pablo Bronstein, Pair of Consoles, 2011
Pablo Bronstein, Large Cabinet / Office, 2011
Images: Strange Harvest
The exhibition stretches across the entire ICA building, Nash House, including two daily choreographed performances set against an illusionistic backdrop of a Georgian forecourt at the very start of the exhibition. The dancers’ costumes are designed by up and coming London-based fashion designer Mary Katrantzou and form the perfect juxtaposition for Bronstein’s work. Katrantzou took inspiration for the clothing from Pablo’s previous work “Drapes in the William Kent Style” and the “Horological Promenade”. The evening performance I saw can be seen below, with the dancer wearing a blue and turquoise ballet costume, which enhanced the fluidity of her moves. As she directed herself around the exhibition space and inbetween the white podiums in front of Bronstein’s image, the poses were reminiscent of 18th Century paintings of coiffured and groomed Regency women.
Images: My own
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