This back-to-school season, Studio Sandra Recio is proud to feature new works by the Brazilian artist based in Madrid, Marlon de Azambuja (1978, Santo Antônio de Patrulha). With Immobile, Azambuja presents drawings and installations that investigate motion and stillness, rupture and reconciliation between spaces, buildings and the people that inhabit them. The roles of both the citizen and the spectator are considered and given equal play in Azambuja’s work.

© Marlon de Azambuja, Courtesy Studio Sandra Recio

«Immobile» begins with the title piece of the exhibition where a sculpture by Alexander Calder has been anchored by the weight of a pedestal designed for «traditional» sculptures. The reference to Calder continues in the series of drawings/collages where images torn from a book on the American artist are confronted with drawings of the father of rationalist architecture, Le Corbusier, in an unexpected dialogue that evokes the eternal struggle between rhyme and reason; poetry and prose. Finally, a fragile sculpture in which the combination of glass plates, construction elements and drawings create a kind of absurd architectural model where the famous phrase adopted by Mies Van der Rohe, «less is more» seems to take on radical proportions.

Marlon de Azambuja’s work explores the essence of objects and structures within their given environment, addressing the possibilities that arise from re-imagining their presence. The artist looks at some of the most common and familiar things within the urban landscape— buildings, sidewalks, lampposts, bus stops, bike racks, public benches. By inserting an imaginative charge into everyday scenarios, Azambuja transforms them into continual sources of wonder. In his ephemeral sculptures, installations, and drawings, Azambuja activates mechanisms to
attract attention to things that would otherwise remain unseen. By accentuating the space between structural elements and everyday objects, new situations arise, encouraging us to relate differently to the places we inhabit. These works do not propose an alternative to our urban reality, but rather offer us a key to new observations and myriad interpretations of the everyday.

Site: Studio Sandra Recio

Títle: Immobile
Place: Studio Sandra Recio  
City: Geneva
Pais: Switzerland
Date: 21st September– 16th November 2012