Architecture and horror exhibition to be displayed at Ikon Gallery

Ikon Gallery will present new and recent work by 20 UK and international contemporary artists that explore the relationship between architectural modernism and horror.

Modernist architecture is often associated with the horror genre. In fiction and film, high-rise towers, concrete estates and glass pavilions form the backdrop to terrifying stories of dystopias.

Birmingham is used as the exhibition 's starting point, a city renowned for its brutalist architecture. It unpacks the troubled histories and legacies of modernist buildings through film, photography, sculpture, installation, painting, drawing and printmaking.

The exhibition will begin on Ikon 's First Floor Galleries with a film zone. Projected in a timed sequence, the works play with the anticipation of horror films, leading viewers around the space.

Maria Taniguchi 's Mies 421 (2010), a film showing various viewpoints of Mies van der Rohe 's Barcelona Pavilion, is followed by a new version of Slow Violence (2018/22) by Kihlberg & Henry and NT 's film BRUTAL (2022), shot around the modernist estates of Druids Heath and Aston New Town in Birmingham.

Artworks in the exhibition link horror tropes such as suspense, darkness and fear with qualities of modernist design, and the real violence and trauma of its construction and destruction.

Configured in dialogue with the architecture of Ikon 's galleries and neo-gothic building, the exhibition takes viewers on a journey that highlights how the design and features of a building can shape not only movement and perception, but also deep fears.

The artists involved in the exhibition are: La�titia Badaut Haussmann, Simon & Tom Bloor, Ruth Claxton, Shezad Dawood, Ola Hassanain, Ho Tzu Nyen, Richard Hughes, Karim Kal, Kihlberg & Henry, Firenze Lai, Diego Marcon, Ismael Monticelli, NT, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Seher Shah, Monika Sosnowska, Maria Taniguchi and Abbas Zahedi.