While its title invokes the pictorial genre of still life, this work belongs to a phase in Rui Sanches’ work when painting provided a starting point for the production of sculpture.

 

However, in contrast with what usually happens in still life painting, where the artist makes his or her painterly skill manifest, we don’t find any hint of such dexterity in this work, but rather, a great, whittled down sense of material and formal simplicity.

 

Working around the fragment, itself both dynamic and classic in its formal simplicity and balance, Sanches brings it historically up to date through his own working process. The materials he has chosen (wood, wood agglomerate and plywood) are used directly, without artifice, or painted in enamel, underlining the sense of a work stripped to its bare bones. At the same time, the work underlines the interplay of drawn elements in a geometric space defined by filled volumes and empty space, forcing the viewer to occupy a plurality of viewing positions, and inviting us to a progressing unveiling of the work.

 

 

EF