An installation about wood by Henrique Oliveira
Photo credits: André Morin, curtsey Palais de Tokyo.
The Brazilian sculptor, Henrique Oliveira, is normally based in São Paulo, but worked out of workshops in the Saint-Denis district of Paris to create this gordanian knot. The installation, known as “Baitogogo”, was designed to fit into the ground floor room at the Palais de Tokyo, as part of the the New Waves exhibition.
The installation interferes with the architecture in that it appears that it is actually the structure of the building, a notion that becomes disturbing when its form becomes knotted.
Created from the wood known as “tapumes” that is generally used to make palisades that surround construction sites in Brazil, another architectural relationship is revealed.
Challenging the viewer, the artist counter-poses the idea that in one location the wood is used to help create buildings that can be occupied, whilst simultaneously excluding people from access to buildings such as houses. The wood is both architecture on the one hand, yet barrier to architecture on the other. Tapumes, where it is found discarded, is also used to make ad-hock housing in the slums of the artist's home city.
Oliveira apparently employed twelve craftsmen to help him complete this installation, which took over three months to create.
Showing at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris until 9th September 2013.
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