Elizabeth Orr - The Over There

The Over There

An object-driven understanding of architecture implies that the built environment is somehow static, existing in opposition to the activity and general instability of the humans that inhabit it. This is a misguided dichotomy, as if architecture exists separately from the people that imagine, construct and occupy it.

In The Over There, the architectural is taken out of context. This not only relieves the architectural object of its typical function, but also releases us from the prescribed relationship we have to it, and perhaps a prescribed relationship to what is “object-based”. In Orr’s sculptures, this reconfiguration alters the built environment and us. No longer an “I” looking through, it is as if we—subject and object—are both outside of the room. We face these objects as they face us, forming the space where two outsides meet.