Rafael Domenech: The Words are Walls [Pavilion for Astoria]
Las Palabras son Muros [Pavilion for Astoria] (The Words are Walls [Pavilion for Astoria]) by artist Rafael Domenech is a collectively authored dynamic sculptural 鈥渂ook鈥 project.
Scaffolding and construction mesh, provisional materials emblematic of the changing urban landscape, comprise the two semicircular towers of this outdoor piece. The mesh 鈥減ages鈥 hanging from the scaffolding feature graphically dynamic laser-cut texts that rotate throughout the exhibition.
The work takes its title from a line of the poem Flamenco in Big Bang, a book of concrete poetry by Cuban artist, poet, and critic Severo Sarduy. Las Palabras son Muros embodies some of the neo-baroque visual and textual metaphors that Sarduy identified and articulated in his writing. The ellipse, as a shape rendered in relation to two focii, represents the conditions of dislocation, decentralization, and eccentricity. These elements appear both formally and conceptually in the work. Duality reverberates in the pairing of the towers, the outer borough geography, and the experience of migration. These dualities, the dissolution of authorship, and the embrace of artifice and exuberance evince Sarduy鈥檚 aesthetics.
After the completion of the exhibition, Domenech will produce a book that combines the texts and includes reused elements of the weekly mesh installments. The result will be a collection of fragmented perspectives conjoined into a new whole.
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Las Palabras son Muros [Pavilion for Astoria] (The Words are Walls [Pavilion for Astoria]) by artist Rafael Domenech is a collectively authored dynamic sculptural 鈥渂ook鈥 project.
Scaffolding and construction mesh, provisional materials emblematic of the changing urban landscape, comprise the two semicircular towers of this outdoor piece. The mesh 鈥減ages鈥 hanging from the scaffolding feature graphically dynamic laser-cut texts that rotate throughout the exhibition.
The work takes its title from a line of the poem Flamenco in Big Bang, a book of concrete poetry by Cuban artist, poet, and critic Severo Sarduy. Las Palabras son Muros embodies some of the neo-baroque visual and textual metaphors that Sarduy identified and articulated in his writing. The ellipse, as a shape rendered in relation to two focii, represents the conditions of dislocation, decentralization, and eccentricity. These elements appear both formally and conceptually in the work. Duality reverberates in the pairing of the towers, the outer borough geography, and the experience of migration. These dualities, the dissolution of authorship, and the embrace of artifice and exuberance evince Sarduy鈥檚 aesthetics.
After the completion of the exhibition, Domenech will produce a book that combines the texts and includes reused elements of the weekly mesh installments. The result will be a collection of fragmented perspectives conjoined into a new whole.
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