formal pedagogy

paula braga

At times, on days of perfect and flawless light,
When things have all the reality they are able to have,
I slowly ask myself
Why it is that attribute
Beauty to things.

Does a flower have beauty perchance?
Is there perchance beauty in a fruit?
No: There is colour and form
And nothing but existence. (...)

Alberto Caeiro

At times, on days of perfect and flawless light I am reminded of works of art that enable me to understand light better, such as those by Estela Sokol. This dependence on art that I have in order to succeed in seeing the world does concern me. I would have never noticed that a white cat lying by a red plastic bag would become pink had I not known an artwork that treats colour-light as Sokol’s does. The pleasing amazement that I enjoy does not originate with the pink cat, because I know that there are no pink cats: it stems from the fact that I have learned through an artwork that there are natural colour and light phenomena that bring about the magical dyeing of a white cat’s hair.

        Clarabóia (Skylight), an artwork by Estela Sokol presented at her latest solo exhibition in São Paulo (Paço das Artes, January 2011), is a wall piece, namely a large white lacquered wooden circular band, 180 centimetres in diameter, with the internal side painted in a bright yellow. The part of the wall that is delimited by the circle changes colour and interacts with the artwork; it has now turned light yellow. This circular band leads me along a curvature that starts from the art object to a phenomenon of natural colour and light, and then takes me back to the sphere of art. I am dependent upon such works of art to know how to see the world and to see colour-light reflected upon my being in reality. If it is art, then it changes the hue of my understanding of things in a subtle manner.

        What is constructive art if not art that rationally constructs forms – silent, non-discursive – which engenders a new understanding concerning reality in one’s body? As Estela Sokol stated when I first visited her at her studio, problems appear and are solved in the very act of making things. There is no inspiration from any mysterious source, there is no creative force detached from the direct manipulation of materials, colour and light. The idea is not sellotaped to the work; it is born out of the work, it buds from the construction of form. Estela Sokol belongs to a tradition of constructivism that flourished in Brazil at the end of 1950’s, in the Objetos Ativos (Active Objects) and Pluriobjetos (Pluriobjects) by Willys de Castro, in the Superfícies Moduladas (Modulated Surfaces) by Lygia Clark and in the research into colour pursued by Hélio Oiticica in his Invenções (Inventions), Relevos Espaciais (Spacial Reliefs), Bilaterais (Bilaterals) and Núcleos (Nuclei).

        By overlaying colour onto transparent PVC, in the series A cor é que tem cor nas asas da borboleta (It is colour that has colour on the wings of the butterfly)[1], Estela Sokol ends up creating, by means of a subtractive synthesis of light, other colours, darkening her blues with an intersection in red, achieving black in the total intersection of all colours. The coloured, semi-translucent plastics in fluoridated colours that innovate the palette of Brazilian constructivism envelope small stretchers, overlaying fields of fluctuating colour, which remind us of the interplay between frame and surface in the work of Lygia Clark. A thin gap between the two shades of blue reveals the magenta plastic used as a first layer in the piece. A bright blue almost vanishes because it is so thin on the edge of the rectangle that it winds around the corner of the piece, highlighting the side of the stretcher,thus placing the artwork between painting and sculpture. These are often very small objects of about 15 centimetres in their largest dimension, and might even be confused with studies for larger pieces, had they not been bundled in a flock covering a large wall alongside small engravings, numerous variations in the use of acrylic and plastic pieces coated with a layer of black automotive rubber, removing the possibility of shine as well as allowing for further research into the interaction between the colour-pigment and the colour-light.

        The reduced dimensions of these objects presented to the viewer in great number, handcrafted with layers of plastic over stretchers, additionally suggest a notion of ‘lesser art’, of handicraft,whilst the repetition of the objects, that differ from each other in minute details, combined with the use of materials such as plastic, acrylic, synthetic varnish and automotive rubber coating reminds us of industrial processes. The synthesis of industrialisation, handicraft and visual arts clamours for a reading linked to Bauhaus. The decision to install a wall with tens of artworks is another gesture that invokes famous images of constructive art, as it is the case of the 0,10 exhibition of 1915 in which Malevitch’s black square was installed in a corner between two walls, close to the ceiling, or photographs of Mondrian’s studio. The installation of various small artworks on a single wall is also reproduced at Sokol’s own studio in São Paulo, an experimental laboratory in light-colour lined with pieces that leave traces of colour on the white walls.

        This laboratory was moved, for forty days, to the expanse of white Austrian snow at the beginning of 2011. With the flawless sun light on snow-white, Sokol captured, in photographs, traces of prosaic objects of intense colour such as latex balls and acrylic sheets. The colour of these objects stains the white snow in the Secret Forest series, or at times lights up as a neon light in the Polarlicht series. As if investigating a source of alternative energy, the artist herself appears in the series Making of or not imbedding colour power plants into the ice. In one of the photos, the purple of the vinyl ball seems to be leaking onto the white soil whilst, in the distance, the artist carries an object-reactor of green energy.

        The exhibition also includes a series of acrylic and PVC objects that create bulging shapes that appear to come off the wall: Ofélias (Ophelias) – serialised and juxtaposed, they create a grey tunnel from which fluorescent green shines as neon light. However, it is pure colour-light pulsating in a time tunnel that transports us to other constructivist experiences.

        Within the perfect and flawless light of this exhibition, art has all of the reality that it is able to have. And despite not understanding why I call such clarity of form beauty, I understand that it is a formthat clarifies my chaos in understanding the world.

︎

1          Colour is not a mere feature of the butterfly; on the contrary, it is colour that becomes manifest in the butterfly – the butterfly is a body of colour. The title of this series is yet another reference to Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym:

A butterfly passes in front of me
And for the first time in the Universe do I notice
That butterflies have neither colour nor movement,
Similarly to flowers which have neither scent nor colour.
It is colour that has colour on the wings of the butterfly,
It is in the movement of the butterfly that the movement happens,
It is scent that has scent in the scent of the flower.
The butterfly is only a butterfly
And the flower is only a flower.
(Alberto Caeiro)