by Jo Baker

As part of "Paris Calling," a season of contemporary French art exhibits around London, host venue Camden Arts Centre and Le Plateau/ Frac Ile-de-France have collaborated to present "Archipeinture: Painters Build Architecture," an entire exhibition curated around artists' views of architecture.

From mid-July until September 17, 2006, the Camden exhibit shows what architecture means to artists from Ethiopia to Germany. The collection can also be interpreted as a paradox or a protest concerning architecture's relation to mass history and personal identity.

One way to tackle the subject artistically is through memory, and a number of the artists turn to buildings from their pasts. Few explorations are all positive, or all negative.

Inspired by the stark, postwar architecture of her youth in Germany, Silke Schatz uses her work to reconcile and recollect, with strong bare forms in the fanciful colors of childhood. This can be seen in an untitled wall painting and in "Mothership," a suspended series of paper and wire hoops that pivot around like a helix, with old photos and text pasted roughly inside.   >>>

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The Mothership, 2003, by Silke Schatz, courtesy of the artist and Wilkinson Gallery, London. Photo: Andy Keate Alexandra Road, 2005, by Yves Bélorgey, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Zippas, Paris. Photo: Andy Keate   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.