CSH #23 is short for Case Study House Nr 23. The Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine. The magazine asked well-known architects, among them Charles and Ray Eames and Richard Neutra, to join the programme and invited them to design a house that “must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual performance”.1 The programme ran intermittently from 1945 until 1966. CSH #23 (Triad), designed by the architects Killingsworth, Brady, Smith & Assoc., consisted of three houses called A, B and C which were built in La Jolla (San Diego) in 1960.
The four renderings in the series Case Study House Nr 23 are the artist’s final works. CSH #23 B I (53.2) and II (53.3) recall earlier works such as Miller House and Farnsworth House, while the digital collages CSH #23 B III (53.4) and IV (53.5) come across as experimental and almost playful. A photograph of CSH #23 B provides the motif for the work CSH #23 B III.
In CSH #23 B IV the dimensions of the original image have been distorted, making it difficult to work out that it actually refers to the existing rendering CSH #23 B I. In this case, the interior is presented as a mirror image, and the colours inverted in a similar manner to a photographic negative. A further visual layer has been placed over this, like a multiple projection or even a double exposure, so that the superimposed, intertwining images take on an abstract appearance. Both visual collages are particularly puzzling. The interwoven visual motifs and fragments are more easily understood in CSH #23 B I and II: Fixed elements in the visual repertoire employed by the artist include Persian carpet-knotting skills – whether as a rug, wall hanging or cushion cover – and a Swiss cheese plant. Weyermann continues her research into modernist architecture with the series CSH #23 B, referring to an earlier work of her own in CSH #23 B II. MH #1 (50.09) hangs on a right-hand wall, opening up the space with one more picture nestling within another.
1https://www.artsandarchitecture.com/case.houses/pdf01/csh_announcement.pdf