The group show No Room acknowledges that we tend to be conflicted when it comes to modern architecture. On one hand, the sleek, orderly, programmed spaces become easy symbols for the fall of Modernist optimism, serving as a vehicle for general critique ranging from the failure of housing projects to Facism. On the other hand, many people still seek the lifestyles to which Modern Architecture aspired, lifestyles which conform, in the words of the shows’ curators, to a “nearly insatiable contemporary desire for the holistic image.” We both want and don’t want the sane, mannered existence offered by Mies Van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson.

With this ambivalence towards Modern Architecture firmly established, No Room attempts to reach inside of these seemingly unreconcilable feelings to present a place of activity where we can work through these conflicts with pool tables, inviting chairs, arranged relational moments, and a large amount of photography. The photographers in the exhibition are the some of the best working today – Jim Welling, Allan Sekula, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and the younger but impressive Walead Beshty. Don’t miss Beshty’s work involving a Corbusier chair, a sly work melding Duchamp’s Hat Rack, 1964 with the historical import of the photograph.

(Images: Installation views from No Room, courtesy of Christopher Grimes Gallery)