Opening Reception: Tuesday May 2, 2006 6.30-8.30 pm 

Gower explores modernity in the context of cities and buildings. His past projects have explored how architecture is represented through movement, the effects of color on modernist architecture, and the internationalist aspect of its design using video projections, site-specific digital prints, and a pavilion built on the grounds of the Jumex Factory in Mexico City. 

Shown as a digital video projection, Ciudad Moderna was a composite of clips taken from a popular Mexican film released in 1966. Each film fragment contained images of 1950s and 60s Mexican Modernist architecture—either interiors, façades or streetscapes. The source film, Despedida de Casada (Dir. Juan de Orduña), was treated as a document of the contemporary city and re-edited to highlight the architecture of Mexico such as the Museum of Anthropology, the apartment buildings of Avenida de la Reforma, and the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco. The clips were interspersed with freeze-frames, each of which captured an image of the architecture in pristine black and white, or dissolved to a perspective rendering similar to an illustration from an architectural monograph. Ciudad Moderna sought to untangle the architecture from the narrative thread of the original film and recompose a story of the city as a built environment

Ciudad Moderna has been presented in Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Florence, and Mexico City. Storefront is delighted to bring this work to New York, the artist’s homebase, for the first time.
Terence Gower is a Canadian artist currently living and working between New York City and Mexico City. He has exhibited his work at galleries and museums in the US (PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; ICA Boston; UCLA Hammer Museum, LA; Queens Museum, New York ), Mexico City (La Colecci—n Jumex; Museo del Chopo; Galer’a Arte Mexicano; Laboratorio Arte Alameda), Canada (The Power Plant, Toronto; Gallery 101, Ottawa; Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver); Germany, (Galerie M+R Fricke; Berlin Gallerie fŸr Zeitgenn‰ssiches Kunst, Leipzig); and Latin America (XIII Bienal de la Habana; XI Mostra da Gravura, Curitiba, Brazil; and Centro Recoleta, Buenos Aires). He has published seven editions and multiples, most recently Kitchen I & II, 2004. He has created public projects for Cologne, Germany, Mexico City, and New York City.