An Evening with Wil Natzel @ The Soap Factory - Thursday, July 22nd

**MEDIA ALERT**

An Evening with Wil Natzel @ The Soap Factory:
Closing Reception & Artist Talk with creator of "Suspended Cardboard Domes with Giant Squid, 2010"
On display as part of What Remains - Through July 25th

Thursday, July 22nd, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

sponsored by VimLab Promotions & l'etoile

WHO:
Architect and artist Wil Natzel, whose installation "Suspended Cardboard Domes with Giant Squid, 2010," created entirely from CNC Cut Cardboard and hot glue is currently on display at The Soap Factory through July 25th, as part of What Remains. Wil recently graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art with a Master of Architecture. With its unique working environment, in close proximity to Artist-in-Residence Bill Massie, he produced and assembled large architectural in scale constructions out of laser cut cardboard. Wil's cardboard constructions will be featured in an upcoming book, "Outside the Box: Cardboard Design Now" from Black Dog Publishing. Early in his career, he worked at Lazor Office in Minneapolis with Charlie Lazor, designing the FlatPak prefabricated bathroom system, and worked on FlatPak housing layouts. He has recently been an invited architecture critic to studio reviews at the University of Michigan and Iowa State University, where he received his bachelor of Architecture.

Artist Statement:
    This installation allows me to continue an expansion in architectural Eclecticism. I endeavored to explore and revel in the expression of patterned surfaces and dare I say, Romanticism shunned by purely performative architecture. In doing so, I have allowed and made space for narrative to exist, by providing support to have more cardboard, the lowliest of materials, components fabricated. My work inhabits the joint between decorative and purely performative architecture using technological tools such as CNC lasers, cutters or digital sign cutters. I endeavor to continue to construct structures where pattern and decoration can thrive in Architecture and not be immediately cast aside as purely historicism, with the aim of continuing to create a "Spatial Graffiti." a purely decorative and non-permanent enhancement to the built environment.
    My continuing research intention is to further examine contemporary fabrication and manufacturing relative to its historically antagonistic relationship between technology and the production of ornament and decoration. I study the history of ornament from the middle of the 19th century primary and onward to the present day in order to identify the various usage models and conflicting definitions of ornamentation. As I seek out an eclectic range of contemporary and historical examples, I work to actually produce and renew the definition of the decorative and eclectic in architecture.

WHAT:
A closing reception and early evening artist talk to celebrate Wil Natzel's dramatic installation "Suspended Cardboard Domes with Giant Squid, 2010," on display at The Soap Factory through Sunday, July 25th.

WHEN:
Thursday, July 22, 2010
6:00 - 8:00 pm

"Suspended Cardboard Domes with Giant Squid, 2010" will be on display through Sunday, July 25th as part of What Remains

Gallery Hours: Thurs/Fri 2 – 8 pm,  Sat/Sun 12 – 5 pm

WHERE:
The Soap Factory
518 2nd St SE
Minneapolis, MN
www.soapfactory.org

TICKETS:
FREE

About The Soap Factory:

Our Soap Factory building dates back to 1882, when the brick and wood warehouse was erected by Union Pacific Railways Storage Company for the growing rail traffic associated with the newly built Stone Arch bridge. The marks of this century of change is written on the surfaces of The Soap Factory.

It is these traces of the working lives of the dead that, perversely, make The Soap Factory such a vibrant, living and real space for creative work. In our building we live from day to day with the traces, the records and remains of those who have lived and worked before us. Art as material culture is the by-product of human activity, traces of time spent, messages from the living to their many possible futures. When an artist is finished with their work, what remains? Our annual show from submissions suggests that perhaps it is a city from zip ties, a cardboard pendulum, glittering chandeliers of candy, a meteor strike, drifting projectors, diaries, music, a living maze.