This Exhibit Explores the Cultural Implications of Architecture and Design

Columns do more than just keep the ceiling up.

January 31, 2016, 4:00pm

All images courtesy of Ania Jaworska and Volume Gallery

How much time have you spent thinking about columns? Like architectural columns? Sure, words like “Doric,” “Ionic,” and “Corinthian” may ring a bell from what we learned of Roman history, but most of us don't too much time considering columns. Architect and professor Ania Jaworska does. Her series, The Subjective Catalog of Columns, addresses "the idea of the column as a symbol.” as she tells the Creators Project. The screen-printed posters that comprise the series explore the cultural implications of different column styles. "The columns reference specific movements, architects, and styles along with vernacular, common forms. I am using a column to talk about status, taste, tradition and advancement. It is a vehicle for an investigation of architecture and culture."

The Subjective Catalog of Columns is part of the Converging Lines show at Chicago’s Volume Gallery, the perfect home for an “investigation of architecture and culture.” "Volume provides a platform for experimentation for artists, designers and architects, living and working in the United States,” writes Volume co-founder Claire Warner. “And all the practices in Converging Lines are examining their traditional contextual mediums. Whether amplifying the traditional use, or pushing it into the unknown, all the work has a contemporary language that although aesthetically different, reveals the rigor of each individual”.

The other featured designers are fiber artist Christy Matson and artist and furniture designer Tanya Aguiñiga. Check out some of the posters from The Subjective Catalog of Columns below.