Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture: The Avowal
Rem Koolhaas
Dutch, born 1944
Madelon Vriesendorp
Dutch, born 1945
Elia Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
Zoe Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
1972
A mixed-media photomontage (cut-and-pasted photolithographs and gelatin silver photographs with ink and watercolor on paper) in which Rem Koolhaas stages a surreal encounter between a prisonlike wall, monumental urban forms, and a small band to question how architecture governs human movement and desire.
You first register a ragged band of musicians clustered against a menacing stone wall and watchtower, then your eye is pulled to ghostly, oversized towers and spherical instruments collaged beside them, creating an uncanny, dislocated scene that feels part documentary and part allegory.
Produced early in Koolhaas’s career, this work helped popularize photomontage as an architectural method—using cut-and-paste imagery to expose and critique the political and social effects of built form and anticipating his later theoretical, narrative-driven approach to urbanism.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted photolithographs and gelatin silver photographs with ink and watercolor on paper
Dimensions
11 3/8 x 16" (28.9 x 40.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Takeo Ohbayashi Purchase Fund, and Susan de Menil Purchase Fund
Accession
376.1996
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
