Large or Small?

Junya Ishigami

BORDEAUX- arc en rêve centre d’architecture – A docent accosted us the minute we entered the ante-room to the gallery – the pieces are very fragile, she said, and eyeballed us for backpacks or other swingable possessions that might damage the display of architectural maquettes by Junya Ishigami.

Thus warned, we headed into the beautifully light space to look at the imaginary projects for buildings and outside spaces by this Japanese architect. It was hard to imagine that many of these had been realized because they were generally large concept ideas, but each was a delicate little sculpture set on dramatically thin and delicate tables.   All this was inside the Bordeaux museum of contemporary art which was built several hundred years ago as a warehouse for masses of product like sugar. The building is enormous with massive arches and was a contrasted massively by the delicate.