Smoking Buildings by Jos Vulto

Smoking Buildings was a retrospective of Dutch artist Jos Vulto, curated by Adrian Dannatt. Photographs, works on paper and smoke-imprinted shrouds documented Vulto’s process of “smoking” or “rooking” buildings, a labor-intensive process normally applied to Dutch food production. Vulto’s projects entailed securing a site, sealing its orifices with cloth and burning sawdust in its interior. Lasting anywhere from one hour to several weeks, Vulto’s “rookings” infused the chosen sites with a dimension of temporality, manifest in the resulting gradations in texture, darkness and depth of the physical effects of smoke.