COSMOS GAUDÍ. ARCHITECTURE, GEOMETRY AND DESIGN
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)
Shanghai (China)

This exhibition offers the public contact with the typical forms of Gaudi's repertoire from the standpoints of spatial, structural and constructive approaches employed by the architect in his production. A show that reveals the logic underlying the forms, materials, colors and even the symbolic allusions that hide knowledge of Gaudi's most profound dimension: the maximum artistic exploitation of the static and esthetic capacities of materials made without compasses or straight-edges, with infinite formal and constructive possibilities. In sum, an extraordinary mastery of the spatial geometry he cultivated since his infancy -when he learned craftsmen's techniques alongside the finest professionals in his family workshop- and quickly materialized in models, tests, trial and error, until he found the solution to any problem. The particularity of this artistic genius -without forgetting his high scientific and technical qualifications- is that his process didn't begin with calculations and theory and then on to the development of the plans. Instead, it started with a model, moving into drawing and construction.

The show is divided in three parts:

A walk Through the Works of Gaudi, a projection of photographs by Rafael Vargas (Barcelona, 1959) that offers a previously unpublished view of Gaudi's architecture, with a modern, stimulating and, most of all, intelligent approach.

Geometry. In order to understand Gaudí's architecture, it is necessary to delve into his conception of the geometry of space, which was his passion since he was a youth and with which he became increasingly obsessed over the course of his life.

Design. Gaudi put the same effort into designing his buildings and designing the elements they were to house. In this section, the public can see a complete selection of furniture and hardware (drawer pulls, handles, peepholes and so on) created by Gaudí.