Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines
Curated by Mark Wasiuta
OCT 23, 2024 – MAR 15, 2025
Talk: Mark Wasiuta, Nov. 7

The Graham Foundation presents Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines, a concise yet rich examination of Frederick Kiesler’s (1890–1965) experimental design practice through the activities of his Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia University from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. The output of Kiesler’s Laboratory included research, design studies, and drawings that probed the possibilities of his theory of biotechnique, while reflecting on the relation between design, energy, and the human body (its posture, respiration rates, and image consciousness). The exhibition highlights two of Kiesler’s most essential and ambitious projects developed at the Laboratory: the Mobile Home Library and the Vision Machine. Together these projects illustrate the fantastical scope and applications of Kiesler’s correalism: a design approach he conceived to “express the dynamics of continual interaction between man and his natural and technological environments.”

Central to the exhibition is Kiesler’s important but previously unrealized Mobile Home Library, fabricated and presented in its entirety. This dynamic device proposed to improve basic domestic activities, while also radically altering domestic space. In its most iconic form, the library appears as a circular series of bookshelves; the entire piece is ambulatory, with each module also designed to spin within the Library’s ring frame. The exhibition also includes Kiesler’s drawings and studies for his Vision Machine, an ambitious device intended to visualize human sight—from optics and nerve stimuli to dream content and dream images. The selection of more than 100 drawings, photographs, and research studies of these projects will illuminate Kiesler’s remarkable attempts to grasp human vision, record dreams, and to correlate libraries, information, images, and consciousness.

Frederick Kiesler was born into a Jewish family in present-day Ukraine in 1890. He first studied printmaking and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts but would later gain a venerable reputation as an inventive and dynamic theater set designer. In 1923, Kiesler joined de Stijl on the invitation of Theo van Doesburg, making him the group’s youngest member. After immigrating to the United States and settling in New York City in 1926, among other projects, Kiesler designed store windows for Saks Fifth Avenue, the Guild Cinema, and Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery. He was also appointed as the director of scenic design at the Juilliard School of Music as well as director of his laboratory at Columbia University’s School of Architecture. In contrast to other European émigrés who reshaped American architecture by introducing European modernist building to America, Kiesler is perhaps best known for not building. Kiesler did of course build, most notably exhibition spaces and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Yet he did not normalize his experimental work by positioning it as preparatory studies for future buildings; his myriad non-building projects were emphatically architectural experiments and architectural declarations.

This exhibition marks Kiesler’s return to the Graham Foundation; in 1957 he was awarded one of the inaugural Graham Foundation Fellowships, shortly after the Foundation was established in 1956. Through the fellowship, Kiesler was invited to Chicago in 1958 to present his research and participate in seminars alongside other fellows, including painter Wilfredo Lam, future Pritzker Prize-winning architects Balkrishna V. Doshi and Fumihiko Maki, and sculptor Eduardo Chillida, among others.

Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines is organized by the Jewish Museum, New York, in cooperation with the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

The Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES) supported the preparation of the exhibition with a grant to the Kiesler Foundation, thus making the preparatory work for the exhibition possible.

The exhibition is curated by Mark Wasiuta; designed by Wasiuta, Farah Alkhoury, and Tigran Kostandyan; and fabricated by Powerhouse Arts Makers.

Special thanks to Gerd Zillner, director of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

Mark Wasiuta is codirector of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Wasiuta is recipient of recent grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, NYSCA, and the Graham Foundation, where he was an inaugural Graham Foundation Fellow. His research exhibition practice focuses on architecture’s media, politics, and environments through under-examined projects of the postwar period. His work has been exhibited widely, including at LAXArt, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Venice Architecture Biennale, MAXXI, the Graham Foundation, and the Onassis Foundation. He is co-author and co-editor of Rifat Chadirj: Building Index (Arab Image Foundation, 2018), Dan Graham’s New Jersey (Lars Müller Publishers, 2012), and author of numerous articles. His upcoming publications include The Archival Exhibition: A Decade of Research at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery and Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game.

The Jewish Museum is an art museum committed to illuminating the complexity and vibrancy of Jewish culture for a global audience. Through distinctive exhibitions and programs that present the work of diverse artists and thinkers, the Jewish Museum shares ideas, provokes dialogue, and promotes understanding. It is focused on the interplay between artistic practice—contemporary and historical—with a peerless collection reflecting global Jewish identity and tradition, ancient times to present day. Founded in 1904, the Museum has a global reputation for the quality of its collection, exhibitions, and scholarship. Located on Manhattan’s famous Museum Mile, the Museum serves more than 200,000 annual visitors of all religious and cultural backgrounds.

The Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna was founded in 1997, after the Republic of Austria and the city of Vienna, with the help of numerous private benefactors, had acquired the descendant’s estate of Frederick Kiesler. It is its objective to explore the heritage of this Austro-American architect (1890-1965) and to ascribe it to the contemporary canon of architectural and artistic practice. In his attempt to achieve a symbiosis of artistic and social domains, Kiesler was oriented towards an interdisciplinary combination of theory and practice. He was active in the various disciplines of architecture, visual arts, design and theatre. The Kiesler Foundation Vienna develops its interdisciplinary and transmedial activities based on this holistic way of thinking. Research projects, symposia and exhibitions examine Kiesler’s oeuvre and its historical impact, attending to aspects of historical inquiry, as well as of contemporary cultural discourse.
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The organizers of the exhibition would like to thank Claudia Gould, who developed this project when she was director of the Jewish Museum. Additionally, the Graham Foundation would like to thank James S. Snyder, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of the Jewish Museum, as well as Darsie Alexander, Jody Heher, Maureen Merrigan, Kristina Parsons, and Jennifer Roberts.

At the Graham Foundation, the exhibition is organized by Sarah Herda, director, with Ava Barrett, Alexandra Lee Small, and James Pike. Production support by Andrew Kephart, –ism Furniture; Jeremy Gender, Powerhouse Arts; Ron Konow; Michael Savona, and Crozier Fine Arts.

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