Psicoarquitectura | Oscar Abraham Pabón

With the Psychoarchitecture intervention, Oscar Abraham Pabón approaches the constructive materiality of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion from its interpretive and psychological dimension.

In a first act, the artist takes as a point of reference the symmetrical shapes that are created on the surfaces of the Pavilion and draws a parallel with the shapes of the sheets that the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) created by folding a sheet with an ink blot as a projective method to assess and diagnose the person looking at them based on what they see. The answers that are generated in the attempt to give figurative meaning to the ambiguity of the forms reveal the aspects of mental life implicit in the act of knowing. In the same way Oscar Abraham Pabón proposes a turn that takes us from the object to be interpreted to the interpreted subject.

As a second act, he presents us with the materialization of a wall over the Pavilion’s large pond made of terra cotta blocks (Calibric ONE). On the surface of the wall is the drawing of a new ink stain made from its interpretative possibilities and which is interrelated with the Pavilion and with its own reflection that duplicates it in the water.

The block of clay is offered as an object of interpretation, where the walls are approached as a surface or skin that, showing at the different levels of the layers that make it up, makes it tangible and brings an internal dimension to the surface ; which involves both the constructive history of the material and its role in the architecture and town planning of the 20th century.

“If the German pavilion of 1929 symbolizes the future of the modern house, the “Psychoarchitecture” proposal offers an interpretation of the future of this modernity, but now from a psychic and somatized dimension, I understand the brick of clay like a skin that covers much of the architecture and the city inherited from the modern project”

Oscar Abraham Pabón artist and architect, born in Venezuela, currently lives in Barcelona. His practice combines his interest in sculpture, philosophy and public space.

He was a resident of Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and among his individual exhibitions stands out: Representation of a Piano, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Chile MAC Quinta Normal. His work is part of public and private collections such as the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, USA or the Voorlinden Museum in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, among others.

The artistic intervention Psicoarquitectura at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion is part of La Barcelona Gallery Weekend and the Swab festival.
Simultaneously, the artist exhibits at Galeria Lab 36 where some of the pieces also reflect on the constructive materiality, from bricks, their layers and their fragments