The Shape Of The Future Oct 19, 2019 – Apr 5, 2020

The Shape of Water Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Chicago asks a vital question in the world of aesthetics, design and architects: Can architects create a universal design language?

Richard Misrach, Tennis Courts and Pyramids, Giza, Egypt, 1989/1995. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund. Photo: James Isberner, © MCA Chicago.

This exhibit celebrates modernist architecture and environments through unique urban landscapes such as Egyptian Tennis Court photos by Richard Misrach. The Shape of Water explores modernism in an adventurous manner which visualizes a Utopian urban future.

Interestingly, the exhibit explores the language of modernist architecture and urban planning through photographs and drawings in a universal way that celebrates the similarities in modernist aesthetics and urban spaces from Chicago to Cairo.

The exhibit also examines the way in which architecture shapes the way we dream about the future. The exhibit successfully examined how the concept of progress is seamlessly intertwined with a universal design language.

Ironically, the exhibition revealed the absurdities and contradictions in the modernist way of life, and why it led to a postmodern way of thinking of design, aesthetics and design.

Jack Pierson, In every dream home a heartache, 1990. Chromogenic development print 30 × 20 in. (76.2 × 50.1 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Restricted gift of The Dave Hokin Foundation, 1995.119.4. © 1990 Jack Pierson Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago