A single elastic rope runs through pipes that run partially through each concrete block as well as through a small part of a wall. It connects the individual elements with each other. The unique line, however, is discontinuous to our visual perception, disappearing inside each block as well as inside the short pipe hidden in the wall.
This installation was presented at the short list exhibition of the ‘Pipa Prize 2017″ at MAM-Rio de Janeiro.
Credits of photos: Vicente de Mello,; except (A),(F),(G),(H), that are from Carla Guagliardi
Excerpt from Luisa Duarte
…this sort of patient gaze that the artwork requires is also seen in Fuga II [Escape II] (2017), made on the occasion of the exhibition of PIPA Prize finalists. A site-specific work, it consists of a sort of sculptural drawing installed in the exhibition space at the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. Seven solid cement blocks of various sizes serve as basis for copper tubes of different heights, connected by a single red elastic cord stretched between their ends. For its part, this cord extends through a tube embedded in the wall, disappearing from visual perception, just as it does in its path through the blocks. Standing before a continuous line, which is nonetheless discontinuous to our eyes, we are thus invited to mentally form the whole.
As in countless other works by the artist, the striking thing about Fuga II is the interdependence of the parts that underline, at one and the same time, its particularities. The cement blocks possess a precise opacity, weight and volume that allows us to better perceive the metalized texture of the tubes and, moreover, the lightness of the very fine line of the elastic cord that cuts through the air. The singularity of each part is made powerful not by isolation, but by proximity – a lesson that could be extrapolated, once again, to the experience of our present, indicating that the artwork runs against the grain of a contemporaneity in which one of our biggest challenges is to live together with others who are different from us.
The hurried visitor tends to see not a single cord, but rather spans of different cords. It is only with patience that we perceive the sense of continuity residing in the fragments. That it is a continuous line lends our gaze a sensation of looping, making us incorporate the air as a structural element of the work. Through simple procedures, the artist invites everything in the surroundings to become part of the work: the walls in which the cords are tensioned, the floor and the “void” of the air cut by the red cord. What previously went unperceived is illuminated by Guagliardi’s subtle yet sharp gestures.
For its part, the title Fuga [ Escape / Fugue] refers to simultaneously to the word’s spatial sense in the Portuguese phrase ponto de fuga [the vanishing point of perspective drawings], a random line of escape determined by circumstances, and the musical fugue, a style of composition where a theme is repeated by countless voices that enter successively, interlinking with one another. It is thus a sound that can determine the space of simultaneity at different moments. This relation of the artist’s work with the vocabulary of sound is not a new development; previous examples of this dialogue are found in Verso [Verse] (2007), Partitura [Musical Score] (2012) and Os Cantos do Canto [The corners of the corner / The corners of the chant / The chants of the chant / The chants of the corner ] (2012). It is likewise not a new development that the air is incorporated not as a representation of nothing, but as something that exists and affects the work…
