Artur Lescher (Sâo Paulo, 1962) is one of several artists who in the 1980s were influenced by constructivism and Brazilian Neo-Concrete art, the latter a movement that included such figures as Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Helio Oiticica, and Willys de Castro.
Already with his early works, Lescher proposed a unique investigation of space and the elements that can alter it. This is not just a matter of having an impact on a given spatial context; Lescher works by establishing a dialog with such contexts, and his sculptures seem to emanate from them, connecting with empty or filled space. The specific connection he proposes with architecture in his on-site installations allow Lescher not only to occupy, but also to modify our perception of space, shifting our view of doors, windows, or stairs with gestures in which he sets stillness and motion, instability and order to dialog with one another.
Lescher creates sculptures that play with the diversity of materials, and his study of the handling of spatiality seeks to have viewers relate to the poetics that emerge from his works. His interest in multiple materials has resulted in methodical studies of their composition and behavior, be it in isolation or in interconnection. In the mixture of sculpture work and installational possibilities, the observer perceives Lescher’s sculptures as light despite their being made of wood, stone, aluminum, copper, large-format plastic, and placed in ways that seem to defy the laws of gravity.
His exploration of geometry prompted Lescher to connect formats that appear in isolation or in combination; thus the coexistence of lines, ellipses, cones, cylinders, and pyramids, shaped from materials that—even if industrially processed—are ravaged by the passage of time and are sensitive to the atmosphere around them, which can exert a corrosive power.
The work on our cover, Río Máquina (River Machine) 2017, in stainless steel, plays with elongated, symmetrical pendulums that interfere space just as they are subject to space’s interference, constructing a kind of sound instrument that vibrates with the mere motion of the observer.
IVONNE PINI
