A 2012–13 artist-in-residence at the Albright-Knox and current professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, Dennis Maher lives in a formerly condemned property that he made into his home, studio, and workshop. By continually renovating his “Fargo House,” Maher also transformed it into a work of art that explores the connections between art and architecture, creation and destruction, and individual and collaborative work. This image of the building was created by digitally combining photographs and drawings of its structure and contents, resulting in a hallucinatory layering of fractured forms, textured surfaces, and artistic mediums. Maher then framed a print of this “house mirage,” as he calls it, in a custom wooden structure that loosely resembles a window or door. Simultaneously an image of a building, a byproduct of Maher’s recycling of architectural forms, and a piece of architecture itself, the final object challenges us to rethink how architects translate two-dimensional drawings into buildings, and how artists translate buildings into two-dimensional art. In 2016, Maher and the Albright-Knox’s Innovation Lab cofounded The Society for the Advancement of Construction-Related Arts (SACRA), which offers hands-on training in the skills necessary to preserve and continue Buffalo’s proud architectural heritage.

Label from Window to Wall: Art from Architecture, November 18, 2017–March 18, 2018