Ordinary, Except

Fall 2021
Prof. Elle Gerdeman
with Eric Lee

Somerville, MA

Ordinary, Except developed an artist residency designed by looking at the oddities of triple decker “ordinaries.” The typical New England bay window is seen as an evolution of a representational triptych. The inversion of the bay window type on itself then becomes a pinch point that compound thresholds forming a circulation core. The pinch works through doubling, bending and inverting typical elements about one another create estranged new elements that wrap and warp the new typical façade.

“Representation in the Mérode Triptych appears as an actualization of virtual operations of folding. If Italian Renaissance painting since Alberti is defined as a section through the pyramid of vision, then one can possibly define early Dutch painting as a section through an accumulating series of hypothetical unfolding operations...The intertwining of the real and the fictitious foldable object at the point where real and painted hinges meet leads to a merging of presence and absence.”
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Bernhard Siegert