Luis Fernando Benedit: Invisible Labyrinths, cocurated by Laura Hakel, Bernardo Mosqueira, and Olivia Casa, is on view at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art through January 25, 2025.
Architectural drawings, by their very nature, call attention away from themselves. They make their viewers think of—and, in the best of cases, understand—something else, something realer. That is their responsibility; it is the role they fulfill in the production of buildings. An architectural drawing with no built correspondent tends to hang limply. It leaves its viewers alone to picture how the geometric configurations it suggests might have translated to three dimensions; it grants them the freedom to imagine but denies them the satisfaction of confirmation or the challenge of having been wrong. It is no longer a document of the bridging of the gap between desire and physical constraints, but one of fantasy unfulfilled. And, paradoxically, the external reference becomes more important, not less so, when it’s missing.
Likely thanks to Luis Fernan…