Morgan Melenka’s intervention into the architecture of the Art Library uses Formica-clad columns, mirrors and a printed floor pattern to contemplate the simulations of our built environments. Formica laminates used in countertops and cabinets are created when sheets of kraft paper are injected with resin and cured. Formica is a hardened, printed image able to take the appearance of materials we consider strong or valuable. The revelation that the sturdy maple present in our interiors is actually a flimsy printed image becomes an unsettling glimpse into the simulations of our everyday environments.

There are No Walls, Only Shimmering Membranes uses different editions of Formica, adhered to a line of column-shaped cutouts. The column as an architectural element has its own sense of self-importance. Their use in Neo-Classical architecture associated them with an austere, rational grandeur that continues to proliferate through suburban porches and garden centres. Like a stage-set, the columns fool viewers from a distance. They appear to be stone supports holding up the weight above them but like other decorative architecture, their functional and material trickery is revealed up-close.

Formica is just one example of how notions of authenticity are destabilized by the constructed environments that surround us. Melenka looks to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas who coined the term Junkspace to replace architecture as the built product of modernization. Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, a proliferation of low-grade purgatories where the simplest walls must be replaced with “…shimmering membranes frequently covered in mirror or gold.” If, as in the Neo-Classical period, architecture embodied social mores, Melenka’s Formica columns are an architecture for the waste, reproductions, simulations and projections of wealth that we hold dear.

Curated by Adam Whitford

Text by Adam Whitford

Southern Alberta Art Gallery - Art Library

photos courtesy of Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Blaine Campbell