In the course of an interview on the photography of sculpture, Gabriel Orozco defined photography as "the space of the window". This is the title chosen by Leonor Antunes both for her exhibition at Air de Paris and for the book she has created to mark the occasion. Like her earlier publications, this one uses the Moleskin notebook format with accordion pages, although the actual dimensions have been increased on a scale appropriate to the work.
In 2004 Antunes spent a residency of several months in Paris. Looking out her window at the details of the buildings opposite, she made plasticine models which, reworked and shown separately, are reminiscent of low-tech replicas of minimalist sculptures. Their equivocal format - they look like little building toys - is in contradiction with the cold, detached aesthetic of the city, and the artist has opted for showing them in a Jean Prouvé vitrine, establishing a temporal fit between the latter's design and the reference to minimalism.
Antunes then went on to photograph the sculptures one by one against the background of the urban landscape that had inspired them. These are the photographs that make up her book the space of the window . On the recto the leporello uses ten photographs focusing on the models themselves, while on the verso the focus is on the urban backdrop. With real economy of means the images establish an inside/outside equivalence that does away with the issue of the original and the copy. They bring an "abstract", absent-minded eye to the city, and highlight the formal links between architecture and the history of sculpture.
The book is displayed on a specially designed stand, while the floor covering is the same linoleum as in the artist's studio in Paris at the time. This move to a sixties-inflected mise en scène projects us into a deliberately (re)constructed, deliberately ambiguous world. |