Wings Of Desire

The Frac Centre-Val de Loire presents a series of masterpieces from its collection, in a display at once poetic and didactic about the need to leave. For this exhibition, the selected architectural works all share the same dream to finally leave Earth. The title is an inverted reference to Wim Wenders’ famous 1987 film, in which an angel decides to cut its wings and experience happiness on Earth.

 

Either utopian or experimental, the search for alternatives to life on Earth questions their very legitimacy: does this obsessional and age-long quest have more to do with the exploration of an ideal or is it cut-out for failure? In a same movement, the fantasy of a helicopter ride turned Maison de vacances volante (Guy Rottier) dialogs with My Wings (Mario Terzic): on one side, the will to be free from real estate, on the other the realization that flying has become impossible. As much as Discours sur les passions de l’amour (Guy Debord) is an invitation to aimlessness, Instant City (Archigram) gives up on duration in favour of immediacy… and so on and so forth. Finally, after the dream of a Orden Cósmico (Ana Buenaventura  & Francisco Javier Seguí de la Riva), Germen Radiolario (María Mallo) restore the memory that we experience architecture before the word: as a foetus in a mother’s womb.

 

Exhibited artists and architects :

Alisa Andrasek, Archigram, Archizoom Associati, Guy Debord, Guy Debord, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Günther Domenig & Eilfried Huth, Saba Innab, Yona Friedman, Luca Galofaro, Haus-Rucker-Co, María Mallo, Guy Rottier, Francisco Javier Seguí de la Riva & Ana Buenaventura, Pierre Székely and Mario Terzic.