Landscapes of the Hyperreal, Montreal, Canada, 2015

In “Landscapes of the Hyperreal: Ábalos & Herreros selected by SO–IL,” Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg mine the archives of the Canadian Center for Architecture to offer a new perspective of the processes and products that compose the Spanish firm’s body of work.

In the exhibition,  we unearth a method of assemblage that allowed Ábalos & Herreros to develop landscapes with distinct architectural vocabularies and explore visual references unorthodox to the discipline.

With a complementary installation, we provide visitors with an experiential parallel to the perceived artificiality of Ábalos & Herreros’ landscapes. Archival materials seemingly hover in glass casework whose very framework dissolves against a carpet of saturated hues. The patch-worked carpet was inspired by German artist Gerhard Richter’s Carpet “1025 Farben” which was used in the design of an exhibition by Ábalos & Herreros for the Third Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urbanism (Madrid, 1996–97).