Two spaces, one step and a warning

The project that Gonçalo Barreiros conceived for EMPTY CUBE is based on an interest in the relationship between the transit of the spectator's body, from a dynamic but voluntary perspective (the visitor), and the space endowed with architectural characteristics. In his work it is common to observe actions or alterations to the space that often call for an apparent absence of an explicit exhibition purpose, thus contributing to recovering the discussion on the taxonomy of the exhibition space and its correlation with the public space, questioning its fruition as a place for presenting the artistic object.

The built space, which the artist works with and uses to present his work, is subject to a transformation that turns it into a reflective context. This is a sufficient condition for the author to produce sculptural elements, whether they are physical or immaterial (sound) objects, which intersect and recontextualize that same space in a chamber of variations in meaning that act on the viewer's consciousness.

nº 17, created in the gallery of CAPC — Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, addresses the relationships that are established in architectural space with the presence of the visitor, focusing its intervention on the EMPTY CUBE space, which for one night becomes an invading space in the gallery. Gonçalo Barreiros introduces a change in the interior space of the Cube (which constitutes the temporary space of EMPTY CUBE), by reducing its height on the vertical axis. In other words, the reduction in the height of the building differentiates it from the gallery space and is preceded by a marble step, specifically designed for this event, which gives this access another perspective through the use of a noble and perennial material that contradicts (and ironizes?) the ephemerality that characterizes the event itself.

The action of unleveling the floor of the cube, associated with a sound signaling the presence of the visitor's body in the passage from the gallery to the interior space of the cube, recovers the questioning of the links between the exhibition space and the exhibition as a critical opportunity to rethink its operating premises. This interdependence is based on the form and conditions of the space (on the recontextualization of architecture and its limits) that Daniel Buren proposes in an essay published in 1975, from which I quote the following passage:

“Every place radically imbues (formally, architecturally, sociologically, politically) with its meaning the object (work/creation) shown there. Art in general refuses to be implied a priori and so pretends to ignore or reject the draconian role imposed by the museum (the gallery), a role both cultural and architectural. To reveal this limit (this role), the object presented and its place of display must dialectically imply one another.”¹

It is also relevant to think about the title of this project. nº 17 could possibly be associated with a toponymic reference, an evocation of a place that finds its reinterpretation in this intervention. Instead, it is the measure of the step (standard measure) that constitutes the change materialized in the architecture of the cube.

However, Gonçalo Barreiros' intervention also has another side, which summons up the universe of places of consumption and the usual sound systems (also standardized, like the step measure) of control, whose tinkling alerts us to a presence when we cross the threshold, a boundary line between places or contexts.

João Silvério
Janeiro 2013

¹ Cf. Daniel Buren, “Function of Architecture, Notes on work in connection with the places where it is installed taken between 1967 and 1975, some of which are specially summarized here”, Thinking About Exhibitions, London and New York: Routledge, 2002 (new edition), p. 315.
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