Ryan Preciado and Manuel Sandoval: So Near, So Far

By re-creating Manuel Sandoval’s furniture designs for a Rudolph M. Schindler house, Preciado initiates a multigenerational dialogue encompassing architecture, authorship and the built environment

In 2020, artist Ryan Preciado (born 1989) began a conversation across time with the life and work of carpenter Manuel Sandoval, who was born nearly 100 years before the artist and worked with architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph M. Schindler. Preciado had been asked to re-create a dining set made by Sandoval for the Ralph G. Walker House, a Los Angeles home designed by Schindler. Working from chairs made in the 1940s, Preciado undertook a kind of forensics to understand how to achieve Sandoval’s deeply technical design. Along the way, Preciado engaged in an imagined discourse with Sandoval--about the latter’s craft, life and how he navigated a crucial chapter in American architectural history. The culmination of nearly five years of research into this under-historicized figure, So Near, So Far presents work by Preciado in dialogue with Sandoval’s story, breaking open established narratives about authorship and the built environment.

This book was published in conjunction with Palm Springs Art Museum.