Untitled (S.R. Crown Hall), 2016
Pigment prints and aluminum frames

Mies van der Rohe’s distinctive steel and glass architectural style is recognized as the quintessential manifestation of Modernism—the late 19th to the mid-20th century movement that aimed at radically breaking with the past in order to envision a more rationalized and efficient world. Evron’s photographs of van der Rohe’s windows at S.R. Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus, with their somewhat too serene and perfect skies, allude to the failure of Modernism as a pivotal moment of reckoning between idealism and reality in the history of the West. IIT was originally founded in 1937 as “The New Bauhaus” by László Moholy-Nagy, who, like van der Rohe, fled Germany during the ascent to power of the Nazi party. However, this idealist institutional model failed to strike a sustainable balance between creative exploration and the pressing demands of capitalism.

Courtesy of the artist.