TOTO GALLERY·MA is pleased to announce Smiljan Radić: BESTIARY, a solo exhibition of the architect who runs a uniquely creative practice in Chile’s capital city of Santiago.
Radić has been drawing increasing attention for his distinctive creative perspective with the recent rise in interest in modern South American architecture. In 2010, he presented an installation titled The Boy Hidden in a Fish at the Venice Biennale. In the same year, he exhibited Refuge, a piece set on a 1,800-mm-square pedestal, as one of seven featured architects in the TOTO GALLERY·MA 25th-Anniversary Exhibition GLOBAL ENDS—towards the beginning.
The very poetic Radić often finds the sources for his ideas in the primal Chilean landscape that he carries within him, in his artwork, and even in his favorite fables. At the same time, he also combines non-uniformly shaped materials such as megaliths and membranes to make bold and deft compositions adapted to the site and environment. For example, in 2010, he took inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant to make an experimental model, titled The Castle of the Selfish Giant, which he later developed into the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2014.
BESTIARY will present modern-day bestiaries imagined by Radić through a presentation of 20 models symbolizing various imaginary creatures. Additionally, the exhibition will feature 70 sketchbooks that Radić has kept for each of his projects. We invite visitors to look through their own eyes to identify and comprehend the sources of the architect’s at-times cryptic thinking and the “moments of conviction” embodied within each of his models.