Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Program: Installation
Status: Completed, 2015

A collection of thoughts on architecture through Some Views of Triumphal Arches. There are six principle components to the installation… Everything is somewhat independent and everything is simultaneously interconnected 1. Full Scale Model – An assemblage of foam blocks that are reproductions of the triumphal arches documented by Sebastiano Serlio his 16th century Book III: On Antiques. 2. Toy Blocks – Heaps of fragment pieces are scattered around. They are created from Francois Blondel’s presentation of triumphal arches in his 1675 Course d’Architecture. Glue guns encourage visitors to make objects out of the parts and ledges on the Full Scale Model are happy serve as shelves for display. 3. Giuseppe Vasi’s 1765 Campo Vaccino engraved plate was blown up to 96” x 236” and redrawn on the gallery wall using Sharpie permanent marker. The drawing, a kind of performance piece executed in isolation, was created over a 9 day self-imposed limit, or 200 hours standing up against the wall. At the closing of the installation a painting party was held where Tate served cake and negronis while he painted over the drawing. 4. JNL Durand’s Précis des leçons from 1813 is redrawn and represented in an accordion folded flipbook that pays homage to Ed Ruscha’s, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip.” 5. A series of models were made based on images of triumphal arches documented, proposed, or realized during the twentieth century. These were positioned on the Full Scale Model alongside a series of triumphal arch readymades 6. Former Taubman College Fellows were invited to contribute a small fragment from their fellowship project to perform as a piece of spolia within the installation.

Project Team: James Michael Tate, Anthony Chou, Alan Lucey, Hyun Min, Asa Peller, Tafhim Rahman, Kevin Rosenberg, Diem Tran, Emily Trulson, Xu Zhang