Point Architecture

Jan Kaláb also developed his three-dimensional graffiti into objects with close affinities to architecture. It’s not surprising, after all that’s what he initially studied, before moving on to sculpture and drawing. Although his studies of architecture didn’t last long, the subject left an impression on him and a response was not long in coming. In 2005 he was asked to take part in the show City of Names in Berlin. It took place in the open space in front of the Kunsthalle Bethanien as part of the international event Backjumps . Here, he constructed the first architectural POINT employing wooden transport pallets, which functioned as the gateway to the exhibition area. It was possible to walk through the space between the letters, but because of their massiveness it was also possible to walk over them as if over a footbridge (with watch towers included), and one could also go inside them. The installation was crowned with a birdhouse, an actual habitable space. In 2011, he took part in a street art show in São Paulo in Brazil, taking place in the Museo de Arte de São Paulo which was built in 1947 by the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi and is renowned for its excellent collection of European and South American art. Kaláb’s POINT became “architecture within architecture” – a spatial intervention which incorporated the gallery’s staircase. As in Berlin years earlier, visitors could walk through red, sharply incised, horizontally elongated letters, each of which represented a distinctive, and interactive, object. Hundreds of small plastic balls were packed into the rectangular letter O, and those who attended the show opening could dive into them, as if throwing themselves into someone’s welcoming arms.