Never again must the real be produced

From the 1930's to the present day, a house situated in the hills of Los Angeles, California has acted as background for a tremendous number of films. The "Ennis House," designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1920's for a Hollywood businessman, exuded all the trappings of high Modernism. But in spite of all of its sleek lines and faux futuristic aesthetics, it has slipped into obscurity. It has become a building lost in the American architectural canon. This thesis questions what the real Ennis house is and who may lay claim to it. I am not interested in the structure of the building but in how the decoration of the Ennis house can be simulated and then contextualized within the gallery setting. I use the most recognizable component, from its numerous appearances in film, to create an active tableau into which the viewer to cast themselves into. By recreating the textile block decorations of the Ennis house, I have taken ownership of their future. This essay demonstrates the strategies used to guide the contextual awakening of the tile block as a gateway to a multiplicity of realities. By presenting the tile in conjunction with its film appearances in the gallery space, I can collapse the numerous fictive realities associated with the Ennis house into a discreet installation, or into a singular handheld tile block. By considering the installation as a collection of miniatures, I am able to give the viewer a transcendent viewpoint. From this point of view, the work is allusive and creates a stage that we can project, by association, a deliberate set of contexts. This animation of the objects initiates a variety of worlds for the viewer to explore. In this way, the decoration of the Ennis house, a thing that has lived in the periphery of architectural history and in service to the creation of film is made central. The essence of the building has been distilled into miniature along with all the potential realities it has come to represent. In this way, I justify that my simulated ceramic Ennis house is in fact the rightful Ennis house.