Iran do Espírito Santo
Fortes D�Aloia & Gabriel | Galeria
Iran do Espírito Santo’s recent exhibition “Fuso” included one site-specific wall work and two sculptures, all anchored in the concept of time. The Portuguese titlehas both temporal and mechanical implications. It can refer to the time difference between geographic zones (fuso horário), the spiral thread of a nut or bolt (fuso mecânico), the mainspring of a clock, or an apparatus used in the spinning of thread in preindustrial times, that is, a spindle. The point of intersection between ideas that revolve around industrial evolution and its effects on art—its making and its form—is recurrent in the artist’s work, and the tensions between possible meanings and an expansive range of associations instilled the sense of displacement so familiar in contemporary art of Duchampian heritage.
Do Espírito Santo chose to use the gallery’s existing spatial division—the exhibition rooms are on the second floor and basement, separated by an entrance hall at ground level—to establish a conceptual divide between high and low planes, a base and a crown. Downstairs, situated below the gallery’s entry level, was Base Fixa (Fixed Base), 2016, formed by four objects in the shape of upright standing bolts with nuts, set on the floor. Together, the four stainless-steel pieces, each eighteen times as large as the original it was modeled on, weigh one ton. Referencing architectural columns, they define a delimitated square area—a fixed base. Here, the artist plays on the strain between the upward course of the spiral thread of each bolt, the downward pull of the work’s nuts, their overall mass, and the square foundation they form.
On the top floor, a small solid-crystal dome—a crown—about sixteen inches high, set on a white base, stood between two large abstract wall paintings, each comprising forty gradations of gray—one predominantly dark and the other its mirrored negative, largely light. The crystal Cúpula (Dome), 2013–14, was modeled on the shape of a protective cover for an antique windup clock, producing a duality between the reference to an original timekeeping function and the object’s current allusion to historical—even solidified—time. In turn, the two wall paintings that made up Fuso, 2016, which lent its name to the exhibition, were polarized visually, light and dark, as well as physically: One of the paintings was not approachable, as it was situated on the wall above the stairwell. The dome and the viewer stood physically in an in-between space.
In light of the polarizing tensions rooted in do Espírito Santo’s interest in the relations between production and creation, not to mention the fact that this commercial gallery show ran parallel to SP-Arte, São Paulo’s art fair, fuso could be interpreted as a metaphor for the dynamics of the art world. It is, one could suggest, a space in which artists, the objects they create, and the system they collaborate with exist in taut and constantly renegotiated positions.