Read Catalog - Charles Simonds

Dwellings
Since 1970 most of Charles Simonds's time has been spent constructing
dwelling places for an imaginary civilization of Little
People who are migrating through the streets of different neighborhoods.
The Dwellings are made of raw clay in the streetsin
niches in broken walls, vacant lots-wherever the architecture
of the city offers them a home. The creation and eventual
destruction of the Dwellings is seen as emblematic of lives in an
area where the buildings of the city are undergoing constant
transformation. New construction, vacant building, rehabilitated
building, vacant lot are mirrored respectively by dwelling,
ruin, reinhabited ruin, and destroyed dwelling. Each Dwelling
is a scene from the lives of the Little People, a different time and
place in the history of this imaginary civilization. Landforms
originally with body I sexual associations are being transformed
by the Little People into architecture. Slowly they are develop·
ing their own history and potential archaeology.
By building his Dwellings in the streets, Simonds is engaging in
a social activity. He is in constant dialogue with passersbywhether
on the Lower East Side of Manhattan or in Shanghai.
The street Dwellings reflect their specific locale; they are
warped mirrors for given geographical, political, and social
times and places. For Simonds they are also his "work in the
field." Economic in terms of energy, mass, and time relative to
their effect, these holes in the time and place fabric of daily
reality furnish him with information about that reality. At the
interface between the civilization of the Little People and that
of the neighborhood, discoveries travel in both directions.
The Dwellings are made of clay bricks 1.3 em (112 in.) long.
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