Curated by Jérôme Sans 
9 September – 31 October 2015

The history of the Royal Summer Palace of the Prague Castle – the Belvedere – dates to the 16th century, the epoch of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, who had the palace built as a venue for the celebration of his coronation and his vision of a new Europe, unified in peace during his reign. Later the building was used by the astronomer Tycho de Brahe as an observatory and so-called Mathematics House. In the 19th century, at a time of the newly-awakened national revival of the Czech Lands, the Belvedere was dedicated to the ideals of Pan-Slavism and Czech national identity. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it became an exhibition space with strong connections to the international art scene.

Federica Díaz’s project Eccentric Gravity uses the architectural layout of this exceptional structure – the very first Renaissance building constructed north of the Alps – as the basis for contemplation of its wealth of history as well as the realization of his own vision of the future of contemporary society. The ordered, symmetrical structure of the building collides with the seeming randomness of the unifying principle – the catenary curve, a system of homogeneous, perfectly firm and elastic fibre hung in the gravitational field. Antonio Gaudí used the catenary curve for the construction of inverse architectural models of arches. Today, when computer design enables us to imagine and project structures of infinite complexity, Díaz revisits the catenary curve as a tool that remains independent from complicated technology, being derived from pure and basic laws of nature. Using the catenary curve and artificial stone, a synthetic geopolymer, Díaz projects a city of the future. Not as any concrete city or place, but rather as a template for reflecting upon humanity’s dependence on the laws of nature, of our core essence, which is purely material.