Construction House: Heather Rowe & Ad Minoliti

About the Exhibition

Construction House is a continuation of Providence College Galleries’ (PCG) Beyond Bauhaus program, a more than yearlong series of exhibitions, publications and commissioned installations featuring contemporary artists whose studio practices register with the history and concerns of Bauhaus (1919-1933), the German art school so influential on modern art, architecture, craft, design and education.

Construction House is a two-person exhibition featuring Heather Rowe and Ad Minoliti, artists whose work often formally connects to and, in some cases, homages International Style architecture and various modern design movements. With new works created for this exhibition, however, the two artists collectively suggest how some of the signature aspects of modernist architecture and design, such as structure, order, and light, possess the potential to become hierarchical, exclusionary, or even threatening. New York City and Providence-based artist Heather Rowe intensifies the portentousness of memory mixed with modernist spaces, while Paris and Buenos Aires artist Ad Minoliti neutralizes the negative or oppressive characteristics of modern design.

Heather Rowe works at the intersection of architecture, sculpture and installation. She is interested in how the physical and psychological experience of the built environment connects to memory and illusion. Her mixed-media installations mine the practical and fantastical aspects of architectural history, consisting of familiar building materials, mirrors, nods to modernist principles and the history of decoration, often conflated with narrative or filmic references.

Ad Minoliti uses feminist and queer theory to generate different interpretations of painting, design, architecture, art history and visual language. Ranging from paintings and digital prints to experimental installations, their work centers around geometry and abstraction in ways that illustrate how gender theory connects to visual culture, lifestyle and environmental design—think car magazines written just for men or home decorating guides designed for just for women. Pictorial languages of found imagery is transformed into collage and other mixed-media forms.

Construction House is organized by Jamilee Lacy, PCG Director & Chief Curator.