Air of Mystery

Conjuring a sculpture in the land, Worrell Yeung adapts a Rhode Island barn into studio space for two art stars

- Fred A. Bernstein

1. DESIGNED BY THE BROOKLYN-BASED ARCHITECTURE STUDIO WORRELL YEUNG, THE RHODE ISLAND STUDIO OF ARTISTS KARA WALKER AND ARI MARCOPOULOS IS CLAD IN ASPHALT SHEETS, GIVING THE FORMER BARN THE IMPRESSION OF A BLACK SILHOUETTE. 2. INSIDE, PLYWOOD PANELS DISTINGUISH THE CENTRAL STAIRCASE AND SHELVING. 3. ARTWORKS IN PROGRESS LINE A GROUND-LEVEL WALL.

When architects Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung collaborated on a sunken path for an upstate New York property, they based it in part on Double Negative, a 1969 work in the form of a trench by the acclaimed land artist Michael Heizer. When they organized a Long Island house around a prominent rectilinear grid, they were conscious of their debt to Sol LeWitt’s sculptures. And when they turned a former horse barn in Rhode Island into an artists’ studio, they couldn’t help but think of Donald Judd, who, like them, made strikingly exact interiors from plywood.