Ceramica Del Conca‘s porcelain pavers have created a transformed space over existing granite slabs  – and also delivered the perfect setting – for Adrián Villar Rojas’  Theater of Disappearance exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

The Argentinian artist has transformed the Met’s Cantor Roof with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum as its raw material.  Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.

As well as the grand tiled floor, the artist has reconfigured the environment of the Cantor Roof by adding a new pergola, a bar, public benches and augmented planting throughout the space. The Met’s own alphabet has even been incorporated into the graphic identity of the project.  To realize this extensive work, the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation.

The upshot was that Rojas imagined a banquet or feast where the tiles create a checkerboard ballroom floor in black, white and grey. The outdoor space is populated with tables that are a surreal fusion of nearly 100 3D imaged works of art from 17 different departments in the Museum’s collection.  The people included in the work are also 3D imaged, including the curator of the show, the infant son of the senior exhibition designer, and other creative friends of the artist.

The diamond plate floor that covers the wooden deck creates a kind of Disco floor that also appears to ripple like water in the bright sunlight.  The artist was determined to integrate the bar concession into the work, so a 40ft long bar clad in the same porcelain tiles was constructed. In addition, tiled benches were made to complement the floor installation.  All of the porcelain on the furniture was mitred to created a clean finish.

Tile distributor: CANCOS, Farmingville, New York
Del Conca

A new post by Joe Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, June 2017.