Cristina Iglesias' new "bedroom".
About the participation of Cristina Iglesias in the exhibition "De la nature" which is held at the museum of Grenoble until March 19, 2023.
On the home page of her website, you can choose between "Doors and Passages", "Rooms and Labyrinths", "Screens", "Pavilions and Suspended Corridors", "Light and Shadow", "Subterranean and Phreatic Zones"... like so many magic keys opening towards infinite creative universes. Cristina Iglesias is today one of the most important Spanish artists on the contemporary art scene, as journalist Myriam Boutoulle states at the beginning of her article for the November issue of Connaissance des Arts magazine, which she devotes to the artist on the occasion of her participation in the "De la nature" exhibition, which gives four contemporary artists carte blanche on the question of the relationship between humans and nature, until March 19, 2023 at the Grenoble Museum. The three other internationally renowned contemporary artists, alongside Cristina Iglesias, are Philippe Cognée from Nantes (the only painter in the selection), the German Wolfgang Laib and the youngest member of the Italian Art povera movement, Giuseppe Penone.
Born in San Sebastian in 1956, Cristina Iglesias belongs to the generation of sculptors of the early 1980s who rediscovered the potential of the figure, the image, the decorative and the motif, and opened up the sculptural object to its expansion into a site, as we learn from the Universal Dictionary of Women Creators. By questioning the traditional space of the white cube, that famous "shadowless, white, clean, artificial space dedicated to the technology of aesthetics" according to Brian O'Doherty, critic and artist, author in 1976 of the formula defining the ideal art gallery or museum space, Cristina Iglesias very early on invited the viewer to enter a new and mysterious universe. Interested as much in literature as in the poetry of materials and the memory of places, the artist reveals the dialogue of iron, wood, zinc, crystal and plants as much as their play of shadows, always subverting the rules of a geometry that she considers too formal. To these abstract motifs, she then adds word games, phrases, a fiction that the weaving intertwines.
Now represented by the Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Konrad Fischer and Elba Benitez art galleries, the artist whose works of art are now sold all over the world works in a studio nestled in the hills of Torrelodones, near Madrid. Hidden from view behind a tangle of pines and holm oaks, the yellow building, covered with a conceptual work by the famous American artist Lawrence Weiner (1942-2021), conceals a veritable laboratory for her works, surrounded by a vast garden of sculptures, Myriam Boutoulle describes in her article. "A reader of Borges, she has designed an outdoor labyrinth: We can recognize a suspended Pavilion (2014) whose openwork panels play with light and shadow, a plant sculpture in aluminium and glass (Growth I, 2018), and sandstone jalousies (Celosia, 2006) inspired by the moucharabiehs of Arab architecture that reproduce the fragments of a text with stylised letters," adds the journalist who visited the artist while she was completing Chambre minérale humide, the monumental work specially designed for Grenoble.
For Cristina Iglesias, nature thus manifests itself in the form of "decorative motifs" that subvert the architectural forms she builds, ironically and sensually raising the question of the relationship between nature and culture. The Grenoble museum had already devoted a major exhibition to her in 2016. She created the labyrinthine Chambre végétale in situ, like an artificial forest where the distortion of reality flirts with fantasy because it is completely immersive and leads the viewer into a space of pretences, where the plant elements are superimposed to evoke a distorted nature.
Still trying to provoke an ambiguity with materiality, between seduction and distancing, Cristina Iglesias proposes this time Chambre minérale humide, where we find the dimension of the aquatic element that she is so fond of. This "new room", inspired by James Graham Ballard's science fiction novel, The Crystal Forest, is strange and secret. At once mineral and oozing with moisture, an architectural and primitive organism, paradoxical, where trompe-l'oeil is an invitation to travel addressed to the mind. "This cubic space made of white marble powder, open to the outside by fine loopholes, contains a bas-relief of rocky forms and crystallised lichens", describes the journalist from Connaissance des arts. "These forms give off humidity. The atmosphere affects your senses. This sculpture is a place in itself, a place of being, a place of transit and disorientation. Water is absorbed by a porous stone floor and falls into a basin before being recycled to fall back onto the interior walls," explains Cristina Iglesias herself.
As is often the case in contemporary art, the artist calls on a number of collaborators to help her turn her imagination into reality. For example, to develop the Wet Mineral Room, Iglesias began by working closely with her studio team to draw sketches and make wax models. An architect then modelled the work in 3D to simulate its installation in the Grenoble museum before it was made on site. A second workshop in Segovia, still in Spain, allowed the artist to experiment with the installation of her large pieces, such as Deep Fountain (1997-2006), an immense basin made of a bas-relief of eucalyptus leaves that empties and then fills up to reflect the façade of the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, Gates-Passage (2006-2007), monumental bronze doors in perpetual movement at the entrance to the Prado in Madrid, Vegetation Room Inhotim (2010-2012), a labyrinthine pavilion in the heart of the tropical savannah in Brazil... or Estancias Sumergidas (2010), an underwater work immersed at a depth of fifteen metres in the Bay of Cortez in Mexico. Many engineers are also involved in designing the necessary hydraulic devices with the artist. And it is a foundry in Eibar, in the Basque Country, that casts the monumental bronze works of Cristina Iglesias.
Since her beginnings, the Spanish artist, who is one of the greatest names in contemporary art, has relied on architectural forms that are an invitation to particular sensory experiences. Her works of art are all about space. Spaces that are confronted, that are approached, that are penetrated. Where architecture and nature mingle. Where the truth is always multiple. Cristina Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1986 and 1993. From the Lofoten Islands to Baja California, numerous commissions have led to the installation of permanent artworks by Cristina Iglesias.