Welcome to our Fall 2021 Intern!
We’re excited to introduce Richard, the newest member of the PLP team! To help introduce him to the PLP community, we asked him to share a bit about the artists, works, or publications that inspire his creative practices.
Richard Gessert (he/him) - Editorial/Curatorial Intern
Richard Gessert graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BA in art history. Richard joins PLP with arts administration experience from the Art Institute in the departments of modern and contemporary art as well as architecture and design. Richard is also a designer and artist and has created work at the intersection of both fields. His interests lately include the overlap between architecture, site-specificity, installation art, and public art. This fall, Richard is eager to use his writing, editing, and research skills to support PLP’s editorial and curatorial projects.
Richard’s Inspiration:
Mail Art by Sending Stones (1969–1972) by Horikawa Michio
Horikawa is an understudied Japanese artist who established his career in the 1960s in Niigata, far outside of the Tokyo art world. I find his mail art interesting because he used local stones from the banks of the nearby Shinano River, the longest and widest river in Japan, and he was inspired by his encounters with On Kawara’s mail art and Robert Smithson’s land art—and this was all before the advent of the Internet.
Credit: Shinano River Plan 11 (1969). Photo by Maeyama Tadashi. Image courtesy Misa Shin Gallery.
John Hancock Center (1969) by Bruce Graham and Fazlur Rahman Khan
Living in Chicago, I am often able to walk past buildings that remind me how this is the birthplace of the skyscraper. The Hancock Center, for example, was one of the world’s tallest buildings when it was constructed. It’s fascinating how Khan, the building’s structural engineer, got his inspiration for tubular design from bamboo. Khan later went on to design the Sears Tower.
Photo: Antoine Taveneaux (cropped)
“Võ Trọng Nghĩa: Natural Modern,” AV Monografías (AV Monographs), 216 (2019)
Võ Trọng Nghĩa is a Vietnamese architect whose practice I have followed for several years now. His work often incorporates greenery and natural materials such as stone, rammed earth, timber, and bamboo. I like how his firm uses vernacular and modern design to address urban issues in places like Hồ Chí Minh City and Hanoi.