Hotel Palenque (1969)


"Hotel Palenque perfectly embodies the artist’s notion of a 'ruin in reverse.' During a trip to Mexico in 1969, he photographed an old, eccentrically constructed hotel, which was undergoing a cycle of simultaneous decay and renovation. Smithson used these images in a lecture presented to architecture students at the University of Utah in 1972, in which he humorously analyzed the centerless, 'de-architecturalized' site. Extant today as a slide installation with a tape recording of the artist’s voice, Hotel Palenque provides a direct view into Smithson’s theoretical approach to the effects of entropy on the cultural landscape."
Guggenheim, UbuWeb - Hotel Palenque (1969), Bootleg film / documentation / artwork by Alex Hubbard - Video

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