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Building Dreams in the Bookbinder's Room
Jan Theun van Rees: Photographs

January 21 - March 19, 2006

Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington St.
Chicago, IL 60602
tel.: 312-744-6630
hours: Mon-Thu 10a-7p, Fri 10a-6p,
Sat 10a-5p, Sun 11a-5p
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Architectural privacy, spaces that lay hidden or dormant, yet graced with unexpected harmonies and rhythms -- Jan Theun van Rees's photographs study the inner workings and forgotten rooms of vintage buildings, four of them in or near Chicago, uncovering these private spaces to our gaze. Building Dreams in the Bookbinder's Room: Jan Theun van Rees, Photographs presents twenty-four recent works by the Dutch photographer, large-scale color photographic prints, redolent with an aura of private spaces, time suspended, the hidden world above the rafters or between the walls. Included among the local subjects are the Chicago Cultural Center itself, the Uptown Theatre in Chicago, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, and the Hegeler Carus mansion in Peru, Illinois.

At times, there is not so much a feeling of narrative itself as of narrative suspended -- stopped in its tracks, and never resumed. Van Rees's photos of both the Rijksmuseum in his native Amsterdam (the international offering in this exhibition) and the Hegeler Carus mansion, a restored 19th-century mansion located in Peru, Illinois, are compelling images of arrested narrative. Printing Plates (archival pigment ink on paper, di-bond, plexiglas: approx. 36 x 24 in.: 2005) and Trunks (archival pigment ink on paper, di-bond, plexiglas: approx. 18 x 24 in.: 2005), both from the Hegeler Carus mansion, attest to a moment in which a distant 'present' broke away, unmoored from importance, long since fallen behind into a forgotten realm. The engraved plates and steamer trunks, respectively, were obviously items of value and use at one time: neatly boxed, neatly stacked; set carefully up and out of the way, preserved rather than discarded. Yet at some point, their link with an active present broke away, through time or forgetfulness. Van Rees's photographs show them waiting in their dark attic space, thick with brown dust, the printing plate boxes falling apart as time claims them in slow decay.

Rijksmuseum, Abandoned Library (archival pigment ink on canvas: approx. 60 x 72 in.: 2005) presents a similar tale on a quite different scale. Contrasting the tight focus of Printing Plates and Trunks, van Rees draws back to display an entire multi-story corner of the title museum's 19th-century library: a room of royal proportions, but entirely empty, four floors of shelves thick with dust. Milky light from three tall, church-like windows in the upper left illuminates the scene of utter abandonment: no books, not a one, on all these lengthy shelves, and even the cords of the lights dangle, their chunky old plugs dating them to an early 20th-century 'modern' retrofitting. The composition is particularly compelling in Abandoned Library a dynamic balance between the repeated horizontal and vertical elements of the shelves and walkways, and the graceful curvilinear helix of the cast-iron spiral staircase which vertically joins all four floors; the eye's smooth movement among each of the elements seems to deny any sense of moribund space, and the image carries a mood both romantic and elegiac, suggestive of the great upheavals of wartime abandonment.

Other works in this exhibition focus on the unseen in the form of practical architectural spaces, normally off-limits to the public eye, and including two of Chicago's most delightfully contrasting historic landmark buildings -- the lavish beaux-arts style of the Chicago Cultural Center (1897) itself, and the cubist minimalism of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unity Temple (1905) in Oak Park, Illinois. The 38-foot dome in the Cultural Center's Preston Bradley Hall (PBH) is believed to be the world's largest stained glass Tiffany dome; the Cultural Center's second dome, located in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Rotunda, features an ornate Renaissance pattern by the studio of Healy and Millet. Permitted to go above the domes, van Rees's photographs reveal the juxtaposition of the stained glass elegance, and the workaday underpinnings (overpinnings?) that preserve it. Above PBH Dome 1 (archival pigment ink on paper, di-bond, plexiglas: approx. 36 x 48 in.: 2005) discloses the presence of another dome, serving as an outer layer of covering -- something that would not normally be apparent to a visitor. In deep contrast to the PBH dome's lofty expanse when seen from below, van Rees's photo reveals that above lies a mere narrow strait of passageway, halfway obscured by the great swell of the dome's curve, and crowded with paint-flaking radiators and the mundane necessities of multiple electrical boxes. Photographs taken in the rafters of the Unity Temple, Above the Temple 1 (archival pigment ink on paper, di-bond, plexiglas: 2004) and Above the Temple 2 (archival pigment ink on paper, di-bond, plexiglas: 2004), show that Wright's immaculate design extends even here: the pillars, posts and the stained glass ceiling inserts form taut geometric harmonies, even in these normally unseen spaces.

Van Rees's documentation of what exists in these unusual and off-limits architectural spaces carries with it ideas of time forgotten and remembered, boundaries of within and without, and the private that exists, even within our most public buildings. Twenty-one large-scale photographs are located in the Cultural Center's Michigan Avenue Galleries; three others are positioned elsewhere in the building, to better heighten the feel of architectural revelations. Building Dreams in the Bookbinder's Room: Jan Theun van Rees, Photographs is on exhibition through March 19, 2006.

A companion exhibition of van Rees's photography is also on display at the Unity Temple, 875 Lake St., Oak Park, Illinois (admission $6-$8, includes tour; dates and times may vary, and viewers are encouraged to call in advance at 708-383-8873).

--Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.