With its almost pictorial idiom, this drawing is part of Rui Sanches’ ongoing exploration into space and its determinants. Without recourse to a lexicon in which composition is entirely defined by line, this work explores the properties of space through an interplay of objects that, together, define depth and surface.

A sense of three dimensionality is achieved through the constant planes of the composition, creating the illusion of depth, probing through the surface and towards a more ample interior (or subcutaneous) space. Residual forms, whose transparency is accentuated by their compression into an exercise in contour drawing, float in space, hastening towards their own erasure through the use of veiled layers. However, in some place, the greater opacity of some areas of the composition transforms the erased forms into points of light. On the ‘surface’, fragments of black lines (or bars) bring us the perception of a foreground.

As usually occus in the work of this artist, the limited but contrasting palette transforms space into a luminous plane.

EF