Carla Guagliardi

Exhibition

• Under Construction
• Um mar e dois desertos / Ein Meer, zwei Wüsten

statement
"Where is the time I have left in this space?"

I am an artist from Brazil living and working in Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. For the last years I have followed an artistic path which is the result of a predominantly sculptural research which focuses on time as a decisive agent, along with other ideas. I experiment with the nearness of originally diverse material such as: water, plastic, iron, glass, copper, steel, cotton, plants and many others, rendering imminent the action of time by a mnemonic record on matter and space.

As can be seen in the enclosed photos of my work, there is the presence of a poetic language that recalls interactions between internal organic fluid forms, incorporating chance and speculation and experiencing the abstraction that results from their experience with the material. Nevertheless, no artistic activity is free from the artist's subjective intention, regardless of purely physical and material conditions. Such assembling combine materials that create new properties through these combinations, emphasizing on many occasions a vocabulary of physical terms like balance, density, materiality, capillarity, etc. These works, in which the physical characteristics are not virtual, symbolic or representational but where they literally exist, are nonetheless subjective emotional assemblages.

My project is to go on with the development and perfecting of some aesthetic and visual questions arising from experiences that stem from the work I have been developing. To move ahead in the sense of working with the space in its continuity and extension anxiety, but always making use of confrontation, of the paradox of disruption and temporal suspension - relating the question of a movable perception to contemporary man's uncertain, unstable and fickle situation.

Illustrations
Às Parcas e ao Edi (For the Parcae and for Edi), 1995, sphere of glass with three mouths, water (11 liters), different bunches of fine threads (steel, copper, and cotton), diam.: 0,45 m/different dimensions: The 3 bunches cross the sphere (each one entering through a different mouth) and form a triangle inside the water; they are made each bunch of a different material. They hang the piece in a tension that is emphasized by their relational position in the space. The reaction of the materials in contact with the water differs, for instance: the bunch of steel is the most responsible for carrying the piece and does not spoil - the copper one gives it the right balance being fixed in a deep diagonal and rusts a bit - and the extremities of the bunch of cotton are fixed below the sphere emphazising the low resistence of this material inside the water.

Untitled, 1993, sphere of glass (different diameter), pipe of copper, water (different dimensions): The pipe of copper is lightly touched by the water. The balance of the piece is given by this fragil relation between water and pipe. At the same time, the balance is been threatened by the erosion that occurs between them.

O Lugar do Ar (The Place of the Air), 2000, bars of iron and bands of latex, different dimensions: Bars of iron with 164 cm, 82cm, 41cm and 20,5cm hang from the ceiling through elastics of different sizes, forming a kind of labyrinth. The spacial dimension is given through this horizontal trajectory in the space while the temporal dimension is achieved through the expansion of the elastics in the verticallity. The whole installation has one center of gravity due to the interdependence of all pieces. The effect of this action (the gravity) occurs in different durations according to the different elastics, giving the installation a constant but almost imperceptible change of appearance.