Exquisite Corpse
Exquisite Corpse
The game behind the Museum Garage
By: Tessa Dunlop
Decorated with numerous uniquely crafted, surreal facades and designs, the Museum Parking Garage is extraordinary. The lead architects of this artwork, Terance Riley and John Keenan, took inspiration from a French surrealist parlor game, Exquisite Corpse (Cadavre Exquis). During this game, individuals are to draw one portion of a collaborative composition that is later combined with other artists’ interpretations, without having prior knowledge of the other elements of the piece. Thus, the designs combined never match aesthetically, but come together as one final bizarre artwork. Terrance Riley mimicked this game when conceptualizing the Museum Garage by instructing multiple architects to design a portion of the garage freely. In turn, Urban Jam, Hugs and Kisses, Ant Farm, Serious Play, and Barricades merge to create a juxtaposition of illusive imagery. The Official Museum Garage website explains the end result as “a unique modern, architectural version of the Exquisite Corpse.”
Urban Jam, one of five surreal artworks exhibited against the garage’s barricade walls, is a piece designed by two artists, Manuel Clavel Rojo and Luis Clavel Sainz. Sparkling silver and gold, life-size cars drape one exterior segment in tetris-like placement. Symbolizing a Miami city-style traffic jam with large, realistic cars of various models and forms, in addition to its metallic, spray-painted effect, makes this irregular facade a perfect representation of surrealist architecture. According to the Tate Modern Organization, “Surrealism aims to revolutionize human experience. It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional. At the core of their work is the willingness to challenge imposed values and norms, and a search for freedom.”
Being the perfect location for an insta-worthy photo, the Museum Garage has earned its fame in the architectural world. In 2019, the garage earned the Best Design of a Mixed or Multi-Use Parking & Transportation Facility award at the International Parking and Mobility Institute Conference in Anaheim, California. Since its design process began in 2015, the Museum Garage has taken on several different titles. From graffiti gallery, parking garage and playground, to architectural masterpiece, the property has made its mark on the citizens of Miami. A spectator commented on the nature of the Museum, “I think something from the creative mind went into this garage because it's not something that you typically see. It's out of the norm, out of the ordinary. Usually, you go to a garage and you just park your car and that's it. I feel like this garage definitely has that touch of art.”
Another art piece featured on the French-inspired structure, Ant Farm, encases pedestrians inside of its hot pink, hollowed walkways, creating an analogous depiction of the garage patrons as ants marching through tunnels. Constructed by the New York WORKac architectural firm, the Ant Farm consists of translucent, white screening against contrasting open spaces that peek into glowing pink stairwells and overpasses. The creator stated that the piece's objective was to “celebrate social interaction, sustainability, art, music, and the landscape”. By conceptualizing an extremely interactive experience for this work of art, and by metaphorically exhibiting human life, this facade is all things surreal. Above all, surrealism is about using irrationality in harmony with reason.
Serious Play, which serves as the entrance and exit of the Museum Garage, is a design created by Nicolas Buffe. As a French artist who lives in Japan, Buffe takes a liking to video games and Japanese animation, as well as Rococo and Baroque architecture. The composition consists of a dark metal framework that supports various black and white, two and three-dimensional, laser-cut metals, fiber resin plastic structures and monumental statues atop the arches that line the garage’s doorways. Although exceptionally incompatible, Anime and Rococo styles assemble in one design on the Museum walls, producing an ironic ramification of an arrangement. As surrealism commonly incorporates unexpected juxtapositions, Nicolas Buffe’s piece can undoubtedly represent a Surrealist identity.
As parking garages can exist as fine art, fashion can function correspondingly. “I think art is expression. Fashion is the same. You put things in your mind, you try to show something that you like, why you think the way you think, the way you choose the colors, everything. It’s art.”- another museum garage observer. Salvador Dalí, arguably the most famous Surrealist artist of all time, and best known for his design of The Persistence of Memory (1931), was a pioneer in the surrealist art style. He created bizarre and erratic compositions that paved the way for future artists to unleash their subconscious minds onto a canvas. Dalí later gained a lifelong friend and collaborator by the name of Elsa Schiaparelli. Italian Fashion Designer, and the most innovative Couturist of her time, Schiaparelli took Parisian fashion like a storm throughout the 1920s with her unrestrained and outlandish depictions. Dalí and Schiaparelli collaborated time and time again, and in turn, not only advanced Surrealist art entirely, but invented an unshakeable alliance between art and fashion. Salvador Dalí’s Aphrodisiac Lobster Telephone, for example, was the inspiration for Elsa Schiaparelli’s design of the famous Lobster Dress. Both surrealist compositions, the two artworks go to show the deep-rooted and interchangeable influences of art on fashion and vice versa. Both of these individuals paved the way for new mediums to express Surrealism, such as architecture, which validated the possibility for the construction of the Museum Garage, and the decision to position the structure in Miami’s fashion capital neighborhood.
Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theories of dreams and the unconscious, the complexity of Surrealism is utterly ambiguous. Since the very nature of Surrealism is the basis of absurdity and fantasy within the human psyche, truly anything can be surreal. Life in its entirety, and our experience of it, is a reflection of the subconscious. Fashion, architecture, music, literature, painting, film, and photography can all be surreal. Surrealism is limitless- that is what makes it surreal. The wonder of the Museum Garage, and the way that people experience it, dreams up feelings of bewilderment, disturbance, inquiry, and admiration. The Exquisite Cadaver metaphorical design being so irregular and mysterious, yet completely lucid, makes this significant property in the Design District of Miami the perfect, authentic definition of surrealist art.
References:
https://www.lottievjackson.com/surrealism-and-fashion
https://architizer.com/blog/projects/miami-museum-garage/
https://www.tha-consulting.com/miami-design-district-museum-garage-wins-ipmi-award/
https://facadesplus.com/miamis-latest-garage-project-is-inspired-by-surrealist-games/
https://nicolasbuffe.com/en/miami-museum-garage/
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism
https://www.miamidesigndistrict.net/listing/739/museum-garage/
