Now in its last week at 3A Gallery, Made in Rome: The Aleatoric Landscape is an exhibition featuring the sculptures and drawings of Willett Moss, a principal of local firm CMG Landscape Architecture. As winner of the 2006 Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture, Moss studied the interstitial spaces of Rome–the stairways that link the city together–and has since assembled a body of work that is linked to both the rich history of Rome and Moss’ passion for landscape.
When in Rome, this landscape architect did as the artists do. Like a flaneur making his way through the city, the peripatetic Moss didn’t so much choose his subjects as they chose him. Captivated by the urban landscapes of Rome, his visceral reactions to a space marked it as one worth studying further. To the artist, these stairways “are places made over time, not by a single hand, but formed by contingency, accrual, and entropy.” Reflective of their synthesis as carefully built infrastructure and canvas for the unpredictable effects of the passing of centuries, these spaces are represented in various mediums with techniques appropriate to this duality. As a combination of the surveyed measurements of a trained design professional and the instinctual artistic response of man in love with the emotional experience of landscape, Moss’ drawings and models lie somewhere between abstraction and representation. The defamiliarization of a city we all know from books, films, school, television, and tourism.
Made in Rome: The Aleatoric Landscape is open between 9-6, Monday through Thursday. A closing reception will be held on Monday, April 6th Friday, April 3rd from 6-8 pm. 3A gallery is located at 101 South Park.
In one form or another, 3A gallery has been a part of the city’s architecture scene for over 16 years. With a focus on architecture and related arts, it strives “to bring the world of architecture to a public interested but uneducated toward the profession.”
