PRESENTATION: Cristina Iglesias-Phreatic Zones
Cristina Iglesias is one of an emerging generation of Spanish artists who gained international recognition for their sculpture during the ‘90s, she creates works that articulate a delicate balance between physical and visual qualities. Characteristic of her sculpture is the juxtaposition of imposing, large-scale forms made of concrete, iron, or aluminum with intricately etched surfaces and sumptuous materials such as glass, alabaster, and tapestry.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive
Cristina Iglesias’s large-scale, minimal sculptures are architecturally dependent. She describes her works as “Pieces that are like thought, places from which one sees, spaces that fall between reality and image, between presence and representation, spaces that speak of other spaces”. Through a language of architectural and natural forms rendered in resin, bronze, stainless steel and terra cotta, she poetically redefines any logical interpretation of space by confounding interior and exterior, organic and artifice. With the installation of three water sculptures seemingly dropped into the floor of Marian Goodman’s Gallery in London, the artist suggests the forces of nature breaking through the facade of city structures. Exposing tangled tree roots washed by the flow of a subterranean stream, the linked pieces form part of “Phreatic Zones. Inset in a custom slate floor that tilts toward the gallery entrance, the three recesses housing the sculptures have been rendered in slim trapezoid shapes that angle toward the adjacent public space of Golden Square. Iglesias regularly works in collaboration with architecture practices, including Renzo Piano, with whom she is developing large-scale works for the Fundación Botín in Spain and Foster & Partners in the UK. The series of silkscreens presented in the side gallery quote both of these projects as well as some unrealised projects. Here the issues of her sculptural studies conform images into silkscreens, onto which she then draws. The artist continuously creates pictorial works which form a very important discipline within her practice. Based on studies for her large-‐scale sculptures, they address perspective and turn an architectural object into an extension of the fictional places Iglesias constructs.
Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 5-8 Lower John St, London, Duration: 30/10-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://mariangoodman.com
