Karthik Pandian
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Karthik Pandian
Work from his oeuvre.
“Pandian prevents these monuments from being compartmentalized by history, as he goes looking for resonances in contemporary architecture. This idea continues to develop in his exhibition, “Unearth,” at the Whitney Museum in New York. The show is the second stage of a two-year project focused on the historic site of the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois, where 80 manmade mounds indicate the area of an ancient indigenous Mississippian city. Comparing this archaic site with the contemporary urban architecture of Chicago, the first exhibition took place at Midway Contemporary Art last month. Here, Pandian examined the communal nature of plazas and man’s desire to ascend with skyscrapers and huge mounds, constructing a four-sided stepped plaza from rammed earth. Now, the emphasis turns instead to armaments as his project comes to an end and “Unearth” explores military protection found within both the ancient and the present-day city.” – Art in America