Gunnar Friel. ‘The UTZON Project. Speaking with stones…’

It all begins with Gunnar Friel’s fascination with Can Lis, a house built by Jorn Utzon in Mallorca (1972) as a residence for his family, after having become an international reference with the Sydney Opera House (1957-1973). It is a sitespecific building, that appears as an optical space, nearly a sculpture. The video is a personal investigation about material and memory, a video diary in search of the spirit of the house.

Spaces of inside and outside, the ephemeral, the winds and the lights, the pines and the shadows and, above all, the marés stone. The architect’s subtleties merge the elements, the temperatures or the reflections of the sea that come and go. Utzon’s sensitivity is shown in all its discretion in this site-specific work. The architect’s esteem and listening to the locus that stimulate him to arrange the four pavilions of the house, and to fix in marés the privileged views of the sea following the path of the sun. 

The video is an attentive journey through surfaces and places, through the passage of time and sustained time, through the passing days that have matured the walls and the rooms. The material evoked and the protagonist is the marés, the stone of the place: Santanyí. Marés is a stone that has, among other things, unique sonorous and musical properties.

As usual in Friel’s research and works, the video includes a series of interviews. Like with the artist Xim Llompart and the architect Francisco Cifuentes of Aulets Arquitects (the studio that worked on the renovation of the house in 2012). There is also a unique interview with Utzon’s daughter Lin. 

Supported by:

Stiftung Kunstfonds Berlin

Casa Planas Archive, Palma de Mallorca

Ministry for Culture and Science of North-Rhine Westphalia

Utzon Archives / Aalborg University & Utzon Center, Denmark

ACA Foundation for Accustic Creation, Búger