Written by Makenna Karas

Photo Edited by Kelly Woodyard

Most people would be wary of entering a home that has been shuddered for twenty years. Most people might hear the alleged ghost stories that haunt famous architect Oscar Neimeyer’s work and run in the opposite direction. British photographer Jason Oddy is not like most people. He went straight to the source when he heard the rumors of Neimeyer’s buildings being haunted. He pulled back the curtains and stepped inside Neimeyer’s home, searching for secrets that might be lurking in the shadows of his designs. This curious endeavor turned into “Imagem Secundária: Oscar Niemeyer and the Ghosts of Modernism,” an exhibition interested in exposing the elusive secrets that lie dormant in Neimeyer’s home. On display at the Elliott Gallery in Amsterdam, the show will run from February 17th through May 4th, 2024.

In search of clues and ghostly occurrences, the exhibition features“Wardrobe III”, an image displaying the cupboards of Neimeyer’s home in a manner that invites your imagination to play. Several wardrobe doors are cracked open, revealing a blinding white light where one would expect darkness. Oddy plays with colors and light in a manner that inverses your expectations, morphing the mundane into the strange. He turns an ordinary cabinet into a portal to an ethereal world where anything could be lurking. Your mind sees the peeling ceiling and cracked floorboards, the partially open doors and unusual tones, and feels chilled.

It is that chilling sensation that Oddy continues to catalyze with “House,” an image that could be ordinary but is made eerie through Oddy’s style. Much like the previous image, he successfully inverts your perception of the world by presenting a shot where the most comforting symbol, a home, is suddenly a source of fright. It’s apocalyptic. The burnt, fiery orange of the sky contrasts the frozen hues of the ground, pressing fire against ice. The house sits in the middle, oozing the same ethereal white light as the aforementioned cupboards. Your eyes are drawn in, magnetized by what you cannot see but can feel. It was that feeling that enticed Oddy, for he explains that he did not want to “flee from [the ghosts]...but rather to acknowledge them, and attempt to understand whatever it was [that] they might be trying to impart”.

Oddy works to further explore the secrets of Neimeyer’s home through “Chairs,” a shot saturated with the same white light and spectral occurrences throughout each shot. Featuring a collection of wicker chairs, the viewer is invited to notice that the seat of each one has been broken in the same place. Much like the open cupboards or the windows of the house, the hole in each chair is flooded with light, offering a portal for the eye to get sucked into. Chairs, symbols of support and stability, are rendered utterly incapable of offering either one to you. Oddy invited you to lean into that discomfort, exploring the strange sensation of encountering something you do not know the full story of. It is there, he argues with this exhibition, that the most brilliant secrets can be found.