Reviews
In Situ
Adolfo Montejo, 2004.
The work of art that takes part in the flow of contemporary life, society and urban locus with increased frequency yields an entire network of new contacts, influences and records that are harmonized in it. Therefore, such work is far from enjoying the absolutist freedom of the studio, or yet, from independence or modernist purity, as not only the place of the work of art is mobile, but also its intrinsic nature, increasingly more contaminated and political. In fact, if the city may be viewed analogically as a “writing in capital letters”, as Plato proposed, today’s artist has made the city not only into a new habitat for the artwork, but also another writing: a city-support on which to inscribe image-happenings.
If on the one hand this city-merchandise and the social production of space provide an inevitable backdrop for the contemporary urbes, on the other hand, notwithstanding the cultural category of the public space having been fragmented to the point of nearly dissolving –on occasion a civitas is hardly recognizable within the cosmopolis—, the public space of the work of art still enjoys a strictly symbolical democratic life, an important visual presence yet to be developed. What we have is an increasingly blurry borderline between site-specific and public art, in which the authorial work is redefined by the imaginary of place and number of instances that come into play: now social, now economic, now political. Ultimately, this also establishes another epochal portrait of the artist and, even more instigating, a redefinition of the artistic poetics.
Regina Silveira’s models present – in the manner of a tip of an iceberg – a certain position within a trajectory. They are constructions meant as documents of a poetics that is deeply involved with architecture – as language structure or cultural preoccupation –, whether it be in an indoor or outdoor context. Yet, at the same time, these unequivocal architectural projects (designed after the works had been executed) are also large-scale object-poems, visual fantasies with spatial dimensions, always with different plans of effectiveness and chronology. After all, as we know, well after the aesthetic design derived from the authorial conception, the final production process of any work not only involves a team and other people (the diverse technical connections), but also varied possibilities of intercession or conflict up until its actual rendition (the operation-negotiations of poetics). But, how far can the artist go? What is his / her maneuvering field within this context? These interrogations reveal a nearly unique, hard-to-balance territory. Thus, projects such as those prepared for the New York Public Library as well as for the memorial at the new Israeli cemetery in São Paulo, the subway tunnel and station at Vila Madalena, the Tobogão bleachers at Pacaembu soccer stadium, or the water tower Cor Cordis presented at Arte/Cidade, all of them in São Paulo, are work-experiences that deal in a set of informal issues, as in addition to its own reading of the space each work has its own linguistic questions, its cultural bundle of meanings, as well as an image enigma for sharing.
In short, what we have is Silveira’s ongoing relation with the city: a critical tuning with forces at play in the urban environment (the continuum of infinite desire and permanent production), the reinterpretation of the labyrinth of memory and of the present, in situ spatial-temporal meditations and the activation of the non-passive fruition of the work of art. It is now a matter of introducing other representational strategies, infusing a new visuality in the metropolitan space – something that the models and drawings reveal through the constitutive and extended kernel of Regina Silveira’s poetics.
Montejo Navas, Adolfo. "In Situ". In Regina Silveira "In Situ", Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP, 2004.
Drawer's Theorem
Prof. Agnaldo Farias, Ph.D.
The fascination Regina Silveira has for geometrical representations, a fascination that finally arrives at São Carlos, surprising those that regularly walk along the surroundings of the Computer Science and Mathematics Institute, up until now only used to the fragrance that looses itself off the rank of eucalyptus planted at the other side of the wall that runs alongside the narrow street, is the unfolding of her methodical confirmation that the problem of representation of things remains unsolvable. In the mythical past, there was the belief in the identity between the representation of the thing and the thing in itself – between the sign and the object. The drawing of something, as well as the enunciation of its name, meant it, it recreated that something. Soon, the distance between both terms became self-evident. The representation capacity, our biggest resource against a wild universe, paradoxically revealed itself as our biggest limitation. Through representation we intended to reach the universe, know it, illuminate it, and as a consequence of that, pacify our spiritual unrest. We would even be able to surpass it: we would create other worlds, paradisiacal or terrible ones. Nevertheless, the more we invent new forms of representing things, the more we verify the limits of each and everyone of those forms. The universe insists on keeping itself inscrutable and even the most perfect of the maps, as the one described by Jorge Luis Borges, the one that was conceived to have the same dimension of the empire that it intended to represent, will never escape its representational nature which, in this way, does not mistake itself with the thing being represented.
In that sense, one can say that the course of man is also the history of the awareness of the problems related to the representation of things. The artistic trajectory of Regina Silveira, which in this case is also her philosophical trajectory, rests in her unique contribution to that question, something she makes while discussing the methods of visual representation or the projective systems developed since the Renaissance. Among the ones used by the visual arts, the “linear perspective” stands apart. That one is a representation of things capable of simulating field depth. With that, an image (painted or engraved) transforms itself in a “window”, through which the spectator has the sensation of seeing the real space and not a plane fixed on a wall.
Each work pertaining to that series, like that magnificent drawer, a remembrance of the enthusiasm for geometry of the mathematician Achille Bassi — a patronizing figure of our Mathematics Institute of São Carlos —, praises not the object, but its representation. As the pedestrian may note, himself a mathematician or not, but someone that turns a stroll into a peripatetic pause favorable for thinking, Regina Silveira is an artist that makes the concept the body of her investigation and her work. Actually, she is not interested in the fabrication of solid volumes, in wood, stone or metal, as a more classical sculptor would prefer.
And, even while her work was being uplifted in small modules by the makers of the tile walls, she remained in São Paulo, where she lives. Definitively, Regina Silveira does not fit in the conventional artist category, the ones we admire for their technical dexterity, for their tracing virtuosity. Not that she is devoid of such skills.
One visit to her studio and the sight of her prodigious drawings and sketches would suffice to demonstrate her mastering of the handcrafting of those processes. But that's for the fact that the idea is her basis. And visually translating them, her project as an artist. It is in that sense that she puts herself into speculation about the way each thing, when touched by light, has its volume changed for a black plane, or, similarly, how each thing, when contemplated by a sharp look, can be transposed to a plane that can thus be paper or, like it is the case, magnificently amplified towards the blind face of a building.
Inside Regina Silveira’s logic, the geometrical representation of things — all kinds of anamorphosis —, besides proving its very existence, would be equally the manifestation of the enigma they bring inside of themselves, its disturbing and mysterious angle. After all, beyond its limits and its aspect, what do we retain from things when we do contemplate them? In fact, we do endless attempts to capture the essence of things, we use in such adventures all the artifices invented for the accuracy of the senses and of thought, from the instruments with which we scrutinize the inside of the matter to scientific methods, but, in the end, few are the extorted secrets.
And what are the objects that the artist elects in order to, from those very objects, gather in geometries its aspects? Common objects, images taken from advertisements (a chair, a closet, a fan, etc.) or more “noble” ones, images taken from the history of art, like the “Bicycle wheel” from Marcel Duchamp, a mobile from Alexander Calder, or further, as of now, themes taken from the history of science that is produced in our campus. A sweetly anecdotal episode, one among many, occurred during the academic life of professor Bassi, and one that helps keep his memory, someone whom the Institute owes its very existence and, as this was not enough, its prodigious and seminal library. In all the objects, indistinctly, Regina Silveira could apply her “devilishly” science, according to which the representation of a thing transforms itself in a second thing.
Treated in such a way, under the domination of a calculated disfigurement, and one that is obtained by the unusual use of geometrical systems of simple projections, all the images, deprived of its apparent volumetric sense, are equal in its opaque, black and plane aspects, with its full and broken lines. Alternatively, while confirming the existence of something, they are, at the same time, the point of departure for another territory.
Prof. Agnaldo Farias, Ph.D.
Department of Architecture and Urbanism of the Engineering School of São Carlos
Images
All Nights
Project for the Musem of Contemporary Art of Monterrey (MARCO), México.
ALL NIGHTS is a temporary site specific installation, specially created for the group of four exhibition rooms located by the fountain, at the ground floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey, México (5A, 5B, 5C, 5D).
The subject of this installation project is the museum architectural design, as conceived by the architect Ricardo Legorreta, and inaugurated in 1991. The intervention is constituted by the cast shadows, black and opaque, that descend from the walls and revet all the elements on their way, making the museum architecture fold over itself.
THE ROOMS, SEEN FROM ABOVE
For ALL NIGHTS, the rooms were conceived as a group of boxes without ceilings, in order to host the shadowed projections. In these spaces (theoretically uncovered), the walls, volumes and open parts are screens to stop short the virtual lighting that comes from above and falls upon all the spaces, always according to a left-right orientation.
The different inclinations and directions chosen for each pair of rooms (5A-5D and 5B-5C) reinforce the artificiality and arbitrariety of the two selected light sources, displayed in a mirroed situation, one facing the other. In such a way, one of the light sources reaches the two front rooms (with the fenced doors) from a frontal and lower position (25' in relation to the floor), while the two other rooms (closer to the Patio Naranjos and the museum external spaces) are lighted from a back and higher position (41' in relation to the floor).
In the project, the mixing of the conflicting light directions takes place in two of the inner connecting doors. Trough one of them a long shadow of a front room penetrates the lighted floor of a back room (door between 5A and 5C). Opposed to that, the lighted opening of the back room itself invades the darker side of a front room (door between 5B and 5A).
THE ROOMS, INSIDE
Inside the shadow boxes, the only concrete presence are some pieces of the museum usual furniture (benches, pedestals, windows) left empty and useless, but positioned as for their usual display functions. However, they were strategically arranged (as obstacles) to collide with the nightly stretched shadows cast by the stronguest architectural elements (the sphere, the column and the fences).
THE PROCEDURES
The poetic approach that grounds ALL NIGHTS is the transposition of the architectural drawings with parallel perspective - a graphic convention used here in its digital version - into the real spaces of perception. In the project this dislocation responds to the intention of turning sharper the paradox of experimenting - in the same scale of the body -, the insertion of phantasmagoric and geometrically built spaces, in substitution of the more fluid ways of seeing and walking through the normal space-time of reality.
THE PROJECT CONSTELLATION
The implied meanings of ALL NIGHTS have been recurring in all my work. They include considerations on projected images and the functions of visual representations, mostly focused on those that belong to the nature of the indexes, like the shadows. I am interested in the problematics of emptiness and absence translated to visualities that, historically and philosophically, have always been connected with dark spaces and cast shadows.
In a more specific way, the project shows my recent interest in the use of the architectural drawing codes, but in the reverse of their common functions of being safe indications to produce space constructions. Some previous installations can help the understanding of the present project:
- SOLOMBRA, 1990 - Installation, SESC POMPEIA, São Paulo
Back rug, lighted window, spot on the roof - 10 m.high - BEHIND THE GLASS, 1991 - Installation - Grey Art Gallery (Windows), New York
Black and silver paint, blue artificial lighting, 40m2. - VORTICE, 1994 - Installation, ELETROPAULO building, Arte Cidade 2, São Paulo.
Painting on styrene plates, 16,5m x 11m - real windows. - TROPEL, 1998 - Façade of the Bienal building, 2ª Bienal de São Paulo,
Plotter cutout, adhesive vynil, 600 m2.
EXECUTION
The digital model for ALL NIGHTS was conceived with the technical collaboration of the architect Claudio Bueno, working at the NUTAU/USP (Nucleo de Pesquisa em Tecnologia da Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo). He also conceived and organized the site with the pretended visuality plus the geometrical indications to build the the installation. (www.usp.br/nutau/reginasilveira)
The piece execution must be done as a gigantic cutout made of opaque black self adhesive vynil, according to the model, its measurements and indications. A few parts of the shadows must be cutted by a plotter (curved surfaces like on the sphere and the column, the detailed fences), but mostly the project, in its whole, can be replicated in the real spaces simply by hand measuring, cutting and adhering the vynil.
Any company specialized in commercial signalization, can execute this project, under the coordination of the artist and assistants.
Previous complementary needs are:
- all the surfaces of the four rooms should be painted with white; this includes walls, ceilings and all the museum furniture shown in the project, except for the benches;
- white translucent filters (films or styrene thin plates) should be placed over the glasses of the doors and windows that connect to the exterior spaces; they could be lighted from outside.
The lighting for ALL NIGHTS must be strong and even, in order to avoid conflicts between real and invented shadows.
São Paulo, February 22, 1999.
Regina Silveira
Spheres
Regina Silveira, 2002.
I spotted the first pre-existent, great concrete sphere at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MARCO) of Monterrey, in Mexico, where it is featured as a singular architectural element. Balancing atop the angle formed by walls of exhibition galleries on the ground floor, the sphere creates a dramatic visual effect in the large courtyard, with its amazing shallow fountain the water of which pours from a pipe at regular intervals.
At the time I planned the environment Todas las noches (1999) especifically for installation at that sculpture museum designed by Ricardo Legorreta, the museum itself, its architecture and its furniture provided the theme and the support for my project (see www.usp.br/nutau/reginasilveira). In this work, I meant to fill the internal spaces of the four exhibition rooms located under the great suspended sphere with shadows, without adding anything more than the museum’s own furniture that is also covered with shadow projections. In the digital model, the (theoretical) light source shines across the partially open ceiling of the first room and casts the sphere shadow on both pillar and floor. Possibly, the project was not executed because it proposed to darken the rooms with nearly 18,000 ft._ of shadow – yet that sphere in association with somber spaces lingered on my mind, as a sort of obsessive ghost. The sphere also attended other works that I executed subsequently.
The installation Equinócio (Equinox) was created specially for the horse stalls at Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro, in late 2000. After removing the bricks that concealed a rose window high on a wall, so as to reveal a round architectural void with 6-feet diameter positioned at 30 feet above the floor, I conceived a sphere with identical diameter as the rose window, and eventually that would be the subject of a sort of cosmic happening. Built in two halves, a white and a black – and, therefore, half-light and half shadow –, the sphere was in itself a representation of equinox. In my imagination, the sphere would have passed through the hole and rolled down to the ground, dragging along with it its great and dark equinoctial shadow. Measuring 30 x 30 ft., Equinox took up the central room of the stables building, at nearly 29 ft. above the floor level. The sphere was built in hollowed wood through a rigorous and exacting superimposition of dozens of cutout rings. The triangular shadow coming down the walls and proceeding on the ground as far as the dark half of the sphere was painted with matte black industrial paint.
In the version of Equinox set up for the exhibition “Estratégias para Deslumbrar” that MAC-USP organized at Galeria do SESI in São Paulo, the sphere gained new associations. Onc having been removed from its previous place, and parted with the round void of the architecture, the great black and white solid inspired my creation of a visual dialogue involving its own immaterial double: another sphere of similar appearance and size, but made of pure light. A dichroic globe with the image of a sphere and a helicoid projector equipped with a zoom offered the illusion of similarity aided by the great shadow rendered in self-adhesive vinyl, connecting the two spheres: the wooden one and the other one, projected high on a wall.
Recently I created A Lição (The Lesson), a large-scale installation conceived as a gigantic enlargement of the set of geometric solids that, arranged into as specific composition, constitute the typical still-life in a beginner’s drawing course. A Lição is bathed by a spotlight fixed on the floor nearly in front of the sphere. The round shadow prevails at the center of the set of solids and is cast very high up on the wall behind it. The light source, which is low and very strong, not only clearly defines the shadows of each one of the solids, but also provokes the projection of shadows of solids, one onto the others, and of the set of solids on the floor and walls. This work was installed at Galeria Brito Cimino, in São Paulo, with the specific intention to occupy that space to a great extent, covering it with shadows projected on the walls.
In A Lição, the sphere in combination with its peer solids offers the viewer a shift from the scale. The still-life is penetrable and the pieces, when viewed from inside, are great, mostly black, unintelligible volumes, often larger than the human body. The representational scale can only be apprehended from the distance and from above. The title of this work also alludes to the lesson that Cézanne taught to Émile Bernard when, by correspondence, he told Bernard that visuality must be translated through simple forms such as spheres, cubes, cylinders and cones – a recommendation I have followed to the letter in the construction of an ironical hyperbole.
Silveira, Regina. " Spheres" . In "Project", "Galáxia" magazine, n.4, Sao Paulo, EDUC, 2002, pp. 241-253.