Upcoming exhibition ‘The Relational Nature of Things’ will present a new series of works by Isabel Cordeiro. Informed by her background in fine arts and architecture, Cordeiro’s work explores the relation between painting and sculpture.
In the centre of the space, under the domed area of Bradwolff Projects, is an installation consisting of a series of large wooden structures wrapped in canvas. Coloured patches painted over the assemblage serve to emphasize the relation between these two elements.
Cordeiro’s works are inspired by a movement in Colour Theory called Relationalism. Relationalism claims that colours are dispositions, constituted in terms of relations between the subject and the object, thus existing in neither of them per se. Although Relationalism suggests that the occurrence of this phenomenon depends on the presence of a subject, Cordeiro speculates that the same phenomenon can perhaps take place when objects encounter each other. ‘Colour is a witness to the relation between things. It exists in order to map this relation.’
For Cordeiro, the actual ‘work’ does not reside in the objects, but is shifted to the relation between all the elements and gestures that are part of a two-stage process: in the first stage, the sculptural object is wrapped in canvas. She then applies coloured paint in a patchwork manner, as a means of definitively settling and registering the morphology of the sculptural object as a whole [canvas and structure]. During the second stage the sculptural elements that make up the work get separated: the painted canvas now ‘behaves’ like a painting, and the structure is partly deconstructed. As a consequence of this fragmentation each element acquires autonomy, yet still bears traces of the former relation throughout space. In this way, Cordeiro allows her works to exist as ‘networks’: dynamic systems of interconnected factors and/or actors.
Isabel Cordeiro [1973, Lisbon] received a MA in Fine Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute, in Rotterdam, and a MA in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. Cordeiro exhibited last year in ‘Pushing Boundaries, Expanding Frontiers’ at the RAM Foundation, in Rotterdam. And has been showing her work internationally: Glasgow Sculpture Studios [Glasgow], Halle 14 [Leipzig], Jorge Shirley Gallery [Lisbon], Das Weisse Haus [Vienna].