COLOGNE.- Zander Galerie is presenting Full Moon Party, the first exhibition of work by the Mexican artist duo Lake Verea at the gallery. The presentation gathers key bodies of work from their ongoing series DarkRooms (initiated in 2011), inviting viewers into the exhibition space as guests to a nocturnal party.

Working with different cameras and formats, both analogue and digital, Lake Verea explore iconic works of modern architecture under conditions of darkness and reflected full moon light. Through long exposures and a practice of “slow photography,” the duo indulges in experimenting with “Deep Time” in search of “intimacy and sexiness”. Their images reveal atmospheres and spatial experiences that remain invisible during daylight. The works shift attention from architectural shapes to the subtle interplay of light, shadow, and time.

The exhibition includes night views of iconic twentieth century buildings designed by Luis Barragán, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, and Lawrence Kocher. Offering an experience through darkness, Lake Verea present an opportunity to explore the architectural landmarks as their owners might have experienced them: in solitude, at night, navigating through the shadows. The often-photographed buildings, traditionally captured in daylight, are here reimagined as intimate, almost cinematic spaces, where the moonlight resonates with the architectural elements, thereby creating new ways to perceive them.

The starting point of the ongoing DarkRooms series was the House-Studio of Luis Barragán in Mexico City, completed in 1947. Lake Verea photographed the architect’s own space in an ode to the silence and the treasured moments of solitude he must have experienced while living there for forty years. For over two years, the artists discovered and captured the colors of the streetlights through the windows, and the textures of the moonlight bathing furniture and books… The vision of a house made by Barragán for Barragán.

Philip Johnson’s Brick House (1949) is a guest house located just 25 meters from the iconic Glass House, w where Johnson and his partner lived and hosted the leading figures of art, architecture, and culture for decades. A provocative and inviting shelter, the Brick House was a site of performances, dance, and parties of every kind — an epicenter of the US avant-garde.

In contrast to the domestic warmth and vibrancy of the other houses, the Aluminaire House (1931) by Albert Frey and Lawrence Kocher, presented a revolutionary design as a 1:1 scale model of a proposal for bulk housing in the US. Originally built in ten days, the Aluminaire House changed location and owner several times and is now part of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Only the exterior is photographed, allowing the moonlight to produce graffiti-like reflections on the aluminum surface and illuminated screws that resemble/echo the starry skies.

Moving into the desert landscape, the Kaufmann House (1946) was commissioned from architect Richard Neutra as a winter retreat. The building was “inserted” into the landscape, creating a juxtaposition between the constructed space and its natural surroundings. Neutra’s building is transformed by Lake Verea’s moonlit portrayal, shining like a drawing of light in tune with the surrounding night landscape, in contrast with its daytime appearance.

Albert Frey House II (1964) was, when constructed, the highest building in the valley. Its position was so important to the architect that he built the structure around a boulder, which coexists with it, half inside and half outside of the house. The colors selected for the rooms and fabrics fit the flora and minerals of the area while the glass walls allow the inhabitants to enjoy sunsets and moonsets, positioned to the millimeter to enhance the visual experience. Lake Verea capture the architecture not only in darkness but also in space, immortalizing a particular moment in time, when the positions of the moon, the sun, the earth, and the artists all play a role in the Full Moon Party.

The exhibition reflects on perception, inwardness, solitude, silence and the transformative potential of light, or the absence of it, inviting viewers to encounter architecture beyond its familiar image. This process, almost meditative, recontextualizes iconic twentieth-century architecture as poetic explorations of the passage of time. Although departing from the legacies of Barragán, Frey, Neutra and Johnson, there is a personal search for moments of joy within the night, and the freedom of dwelling, even just for a while, enjoying “in the flesh” the bliss, mysteries and magic offered by the buildings.

Developed from a tactile encounter between the human body and the architectural surface, the artists work playfully with self-portraiture within the spaces. The photographic work is paired with frottages, or “frottography” as Lake Verea call it, a hybrid medium that captures traces of a building’s surface – extends their ongoing investigation into how the body can be a recording device and how touch can transform our understanding of architectural history. Lake Verea integrate their own performative and visual presence, bringing the joy of discovery to the work and infusing it with an affective and sensual dimension.

Full Moon Party, through Lake Verea’s lens, is an invitation to enter a space of intuition where modern monuments of architecture are no longer static historical objects. They become living hosts that welcome us into their private, nocturnal worlds.

Lake Verea is a queer artist duo formed in 2005 by Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina (b. 1973) and Carla Verea Hernández (b. 1978), both born in Mexico City.

Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Fundación Casa de México, Madrid; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs; Bendana Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris; and Yale Architecture Gallery, New Haven. Their work has also been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and at the Mexican Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Works by Lake Verea are held in prominent public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the JPMorganChase Corporate Art Collection, New York; Fundación Casa Wabi, Mexico City; and the Barragan Foundation, Basel.