Contesting the coherence and unity found in traditional sculpture, Anderson Borba’s fragmented figures stack and join rough, inexpensive materials, burned, chiseled, and pressed to resemble the human figure, while retaining the sutures of workmanship.
Material and Bodies
Assembled from fragments of discarded wood found near construction sites, urban skips, or collected on the streets, Borba’s materials are initially selected for their colour, contours, and shape. The pieces are then aggregated into images once brought into the studio.
Amongst them, The Weeping White Man (2020), a pale hunchback figure made from wood, corner braces, pencil, and plaster, was modelled after media portrayals of white politicians disgruntled following a defeat.
The same visual poignancy is noted in Beastmode [Jacré] (2021), a horizontal figure mounted on a block of cement with its lower half sharply protruding from the rest of its body, reimagined as one long black strip.
Readymade Sculptures
Borba’s wooden sculptures often incorporate cardboard, fabric, and pages from lifestyle magazines, retaining a readymade quality that complement their simple concepts. This is evident in matter-of-fact sculptures like Needle (2021), a thin wooden shape mounted on a small cylinder, or Half-Totem (2021), the lower half of the wooden form spray-painted with hints of vegetation.
Fragmented Assemblages and Unworked Surfaces
Intimacy (2021), a stacked totem figure made of dark rough wood, features untreated, discolored surfaces and a nail-like object inserted in a circular hole at its top section, from which a smooth tongue made from pale wood also emerges. Borba’s sculptures often bear explicit divisions between front and back sections, depict figures in profile, or are made to be seen from a particular angle, referencing the compression of three-dimensional figures into two-dimensional images in the digital realm.
In Dear sir or madam (2021) or Shut Up! [cords] (2021), for instance, frontal sections of sculpture treated through carving and molding stand out starkly against an untouched backside, where metal joints and rough deteriorating surfaces can be seen.
