From Lego Panels to Faux Fur, Spring Show 2024 Transforms into a Textural Playground

SCI-Arc is proud to announce its 2024 Spring Show exhibition, taking place across the school’s Arts District campus and opening with a reception on Saturday, April 27 at 6pm. Spring Show highlights student work from all school programs, presented in thematic, visually inventive, and conceptually distinct installations with undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate design studio projects.

This year’s Spring Show exhibition will feature large surfaces completely covered with textures; “an entire wall of crumpled black vinyl, or a room full of Astroturf,” shares Spring Show 2024 curator, Fiction and Entertainment faculty Alexey Marfin. The spaces therefore will operate on two scales: the bold statement seen from afar, but also the fine material detail seen on closer inspection. The work itself is meant to carry the same logic—"big but detailed gestures, or a reading of two scales”—which will be central to the audience experience.

“Thematically, the exhibited work ties back to those principles of materiality and color. It's very texture-forward and tangible, while at the same time maintaining nuance and sensibility,” explains Marfin.

In referencing the symbolism denoted by the colors and textures of the rooms the work will be installed in during Spring Show, Marfin says that “work made at SCI-Arc often explores materiality, texturality, and color. This year's exhibition aims to foreground these interests by scaling them up into a series of multi-material chromatic rooms. From Lego panels to faux fur, the space becomes a textural playground to be explored by the audience.”

“SCI-Arc students constantly engage with current developments in society and culture,” Marfin shares when asked what subjects relevant to the public are represented in the work students have been making throughout the semester. “This year, much of their work explores emerging technologies such as machine learning/AI and video game engines, and how they integrate into the discourse of design. It's powerful how the projects retain a fascination with the construct of space and architecture, while at the same time questioning its contemporary understanding and relevance today.”

To learn more about Spring Show 2024, please visit the SCI-Arc event page.