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Dream the Combine on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson

Dia:Chelsea, February 5, 2019

Dia:Chelsea
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York City 

Established in 2013, Dream the Combine is the Minneapolis-based creative practice of artists and architects Tom Carruthers and Jennifer Newsom. Over the last five years, they have explored installation-scale work that activates overlooked space, often through visual sleights of hand. In 2018 the firm was chosen for the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1’s annual Young Architects Program, for which they realized Hide & Seek in Long Island City, New York. The responsive, kinetic environment featured eight intersecting elements arrayed across the entirety of the courtyard at MoMA PS1 in summer 2018.

Tom Carruthers was born in Vancouver in 1978. Carruthers received his BA in drawing and sculpture from Brown University in Providence and his MArch from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He was artist Ursula von Rydingsvard’s lead assistant for four years, helping with the construction of over twenty works. As a licensed architect, he worked alongside the late Charles Gwathmey. He also worked at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, developing early concept proposals with formal strategies that integrate context, complex geometry, and material construction. In addition to his creative practice, Tom is coowner of Jacobsson Carruthers, a metal fabrication shop in northeast Minneapolis. He was the lead metal fabricator for Lumen, the 2017 Young Architects Program installation by Jenny Sabin Studio at MoMA PS1. Carruthers lives and works in Minneapolis.

Jennifer Newsom was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1979. Newsom received her BA from Yale College and her MArch from Yale University, where she also received the Fermin Ennis Memorial Fellowship and the Anne C. K. Garland Award for academic achievement. While at Yale, she organized the two-day symposium “Black Boxes: Enigmas of Space and Race,” which was held at Yale School of Architecture. Newsom’s research probes the conceptual space between real bodies made of concrete, flesh, glass, steel, and other materials, as well as the recognition of these bodies through images. She has worked with firms as diverse as Adjaye Associates, Deborah Berke Partners, Cooper Robertson, and Robert A. M. Stern Architects. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture. Newsom lives and works in Minneapolis.

Video: Dream the Combine on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Video

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