Folly

The 2009 exhibition, curated and designed by Escher GuneWardena, presented a selection of drawings, renderings, and photographs of historical follies originating in the 16th Century and ending in the present with a folly of the architects’ own design. The exhibition surveyed the evolution of the building type and established its relevance to modern culture, with juxtapositions of historical examples with contemporary works of art and architecture. Escher GuneWardena’s own folly requisitioned the entire volume of MOCA’s Pacific Design Center gallery atrium, a dialogue with the physical container of gallery space as well as the symbolic space of the world beyond. In this folly, Escher GuneWardena reconciled the issue of lost origins by re-inserting a historic reference to this temporary tower, used for gazing at the sky, the Hollywood hills, and placing one’s self in relation to the world beyond.