Richard Kelly Exhibit (2006)
CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE, NEW YORK 2006
The exhibit was commissioned by the New York Chapter of the Illuminating Engineering Society to present the work of one of the Pioneers of the field of Lighting Design. Richard Kelly collaborated with many leading figures of modern architecture: Philip Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe, Eero Sarineen and Louis Kahn. Modern materials of glass and steel created new problems for lighting and technologies to explore. Kelly continued to innovate in unexpected ways throughout his career focusing first on fixture design to the design of light in space through early use of daylight. The exhibit picks up on Kelly’s notions of perception and light. Walls were gradated with a zinc grey that intensified existing dark spaces and exaggerated the length of the room. Museum quality drawings were hung in the darker zones for archival reasons and spotlit with points of light that created an overlay of sharp contrasts. Fixtures, including a prototype of the Barbizon Fixture, were exhibited alongside contemporary super-thin lighting surfaces that were designed to belie structure. The exhibit was designed in collaboration with Elizabeth Donoff and Joe Cho.