'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
Exhibition view: Artur Lescher, Asterismos, Galería OMR, Mexico City (14 July–8 September 2018). Courtesy Galería OMR. Photo: Enrique Macías © 2018.
Asterismos. Sustantivo plural. Patrón prominente o conjunto de estrellas que, vistas desde la Tierra, parecen formar una figura geométrica. A diferencia de una constelación, no tienen reconocimiento oficial por parte de la comunidad científica.
Con el anterior texto, rotulado en el umbral de la planta baja de la Galería OMR, inicia el diálogo geométrico con la exhibición del mismo nombre del artista brasileño Artur Lescher.
Planta baja. Cinco piezas, aunque parecen más. Todas se proyectan de aquí para allá en todas direcciones del espacio, como una luz que se proyecta sin extinción en el vacío.
Artur Lescher’s work represents his constant experimentation with materials, their physical qualities and objectual characteristics. Through his works, the artist makes reference to natural elements which, when impeccably reproduced by means of industrial processes, reveal and, at the same time, deny these very real origins.
Another key component in Lescher’s body of work is architecture, both in synthesis and context. In an abstraction exercise of in-situ installations, the artist adopts the spatial situations of the exhibition space to transform corners, walls and doors into large-scale installations. His works emerge subtly as poetic gestures in space transmitting force and instability, balance and movement, tension and silence. Neutralized, the functionality of the object ceases to exist and the possibilities of interpretation and meaning multiply.
Artur Lescher emerged in the mid-80’s into the Brazilian art scene, influenced by the Neo-Concrete movement of Mira Schendel, Helio Oiticica and Sergio Camargo. Since then he has presented his work in the major museums and institutions of Brazil including: the Sao Paulo Biennale, Biennale MercoSur, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo. He has also exhibited his work in the USA, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain and France.
Since the beginning of his practice at the age of twenty-two years old, artist Artur Lescher (b. 1962, São Paulo, Brazil) has worked with geometrical forms and the composition they assume when staged in dialogue in a specific architectonic space. Presenting his third major solo show at OMR gallery entitled Asterismos, Lescher turns the white-cube into a new cosmic space inspired by the idea of 'asterismo,' a place undecipherable by science. Indeed, such a term differs from 'constellation,' mostly in that, while the latter is an officially recognised area of the sky, asterismos do not have officially determined boundaries.
For this occasion, the artist presents a series of pieces specifically conceived for the first floor space of the gallery. The main installation is composed of various geometrical forms; cylinders and cones made of brass, fishing wire and stainless steel are merged into a unique ensemble-they disappear in their singularity to become a new form that is impossible to describe through the lexicon of geometry and architecture. In the same way, asterismos play in a space of the uncertain and incalculable.
In Lescher's words, 'the materials are actors;' he merely listens to their intrinsic energy and lays out a stage for them to express their vocations and potentialities when combined in a dialogue, not only with the space they are posed in, but also when they communicate between each other. Geometrical forms, when put in dialogue as an installation, create a fictional space of a sky. While, indeed, as spectators we pass through them in a terrestrial space like the ground floor of the gallery, their ancestral energy escape the confines of the room to fly until they reach the incommensurability of the sky.
Through the use of geometry, architecture and materials, Artur Lescher does not follow the prescribed objective dictionary of scientific knowledge, but instead reveals its inconsistency by simply re-articulating the elements-like the basic geometrical forms that compose its rigid lexicon. Lescher's main installation gives us tools for making different compositions and implores us not to give for-granted narrations constructed only by conventional disciplines. When we walk through those celestial entities, there is the possibility to make an alternative and fictional discourse to alter reality. A reality that constantly moves, even imperceptibly, like the hanging objects presented in the upper gallery floor where different pendulums create an imaginative forest, one that we can only see if we recombine elements into a new narration from the unstable, the uncertain, and the immeasurable.
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Candida Höfer, 74, one of the biggest names in contemporary photography, is best known for photographs of interiors of public buildings such as libraries, museums and theaters without human presence in them.
Pia Camil’s first solo exhibition in the UK might be called Split Wall but it is actually entirely walled in. The large windows at Nottingham Contemporary that usually offer passers-by a sneak preview have been blocked up, and even the glass doors at the front of the space remain covered. The only way to experience the Mexican artist’s work is to...
'México es un país del que siempre aprendo algo nuevo,' dice el artista brasileño Artur Lescher (São Paulo, 1962), sobre la exposición que presentará en la galería OMR de la capital del país. 'Estoy nervioso y ansioso. Es un desafío, tenemos poco tiempo para producir,' cuenta. 'Es una muestra de trabajos nuevos que he desarrollado desde hace un...