SlyZmud
Nicolás Fernández Sanz
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2015
LOCATION
1499, Vera, Chacarita, Buenos Aires, Argentina
TYPE
Cultural › Gallery
SlyZmud contemporary art gallery has opened a new room on Bonpland Street, some 100 meters away from the original one.
Room 2 is located at the chamfered corner of a block of flats, one of those spaces that normally end up being used as a warehouse or a grocery and that, by means of a metal roller shutter door, are activated or deactivated on the pavement.
A typical corner shop that gives identity to the neighbourhood and where local residents come across each other in their daily routines.
The architectural refurbishment takes advantage of the austerity of the structure and its low maintenance costs.
In the same way as the triangular plan, all the surfaces were painted white to enhance the different textures on the brick wall, the ceramic tile floor, and the concrete ceiling.
A triangle is painted on the pavement to be in line with contemporary art.
It brings together a system of geometries that unfold, replacing and completing one another, while echoing the different historical meanings of those shapes.
It is projected towards the street as a double mirror: one for the room plan and one for the volume of the building in the upper storeys.
The triangle encroaches on the chamfered corner, a space related to visibility and movement, and becomes the platform to cushion the limit between the gallery and the neighbourhood.
The square that completes itself on the floor inside reminds us of the white cube, the ascetic exhibition space par excellence, but in this project it opens and unfolds like the flaps of a cardboard box turned over on the pavement.
Natural light comes in sifted through the trees, drawing on the walls on sunny afternoons.
On the ceiling, fluorescent tubes reproduce the logo of the gallery, another set of open triangles, similar to an uncapped hourglass.
Both sources of light merge into each other changing the atmosphere throughout the day, continuously bouncing off the white and turn the façade into an outdoor screen.
The life of the gallery lies in the coming and going between Rooms 1 and 2 —in other words, walking the city.
A virtual corridor is born out of the urban fabric for viewers to visit the exhibitions and transforms passers-by into daily visitors. The audience multiplies, the artists’ territory expands, artworks take to the streets. The gallery and the neighbourhood permeate each other.
