(ab)Normal - Everyday Ruins -

(ab)Normal

Everyday Ruins

Exhibition June 8 – July 27, 2019

(ab)normal is a collective of architects. Since 2017 they have been developing a graphic novel with architectural illustrations that do not follow any chronology. The working material for the pictures is abandoned ideas and concepts from design processes. The authors use these as 3D components and reconfigure them in a spatial narrative.

In the process, (ab)normal avoids traditional structures that build the familiar, visual concept of an image. The results are iconographic architectural illustrations, which also reflect an obsessive culture in terms of density, Internet, and media. For the exhibition at BALTSprojects, (ab)Normal created one scene. Three large-format projections form a triptych in the room and show the scene from different points of view.

The architects Luigi Savio, Mattia Inselvini, Marcello Carpino and Davide Masserini, form the collective (ab)Normal. The collaboration began in 2017 and was motivated by their shared experiences with design processes and the growing skepticism towards photorealistic representations.

“(ab)Normal came out from the frustration that the four of us experienced rendering photorealistic images while working in architecture offices. Behind the layer of perfect photo-realism, architecture gets often banalized and reduced to its realizability. We wanted to explore the fantasies abandoned during the design process. For us, it is a therapeutic release of unexplored obsessions through illustrations.” (ab)Normal, Interview with KooZA/rch, 2019

Luigi Savio, Mattia Inselvini, Marcello Carpino and Davide Masserini met in OMA office in Rotterdam, and started to illustrate (ab)Normal at the end of 2017. Their work has been shown in various exhibitions among them the S AM Basel (2018, site-specific work for the exhibition Dichtelust) and Anise Gallery London (2018, Datasutra, solo show). The most recent exhibition project Micro Tools: The invisible Synapse was a collaboration of (ab)Normal with KooZA/rch for Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2019.