Sutura: Sandra Antunes Ramos
Sandra Antunes Ramos works with the logic of the series. It defines precise principles, and varies around them. This time, she seems to have reduced the number of procedures, colors, tones and rules. It brings a set of drawings made with black pencil, with a graphic appearance, in which a compact and dense shape lies on a bundle of thin, straight lines, spaced at intervals that seek regularity, forming a grid. Such a linear array acts as a stable support for the black form.
Because it is a situation of rest, we can approach, and only approach, the drawings of one of the traditional genres of art history: the still life. This type of thematic composition, which was consolidated in the 17th century, represents immobile objects, in stillness and balance, propped up on any surface in a certain order.
Sandra's structures, obviously, are not figurative. It deals with lines and geometric shapes that act directly on the surface of the plane. A laborious balance is, however, at the heart of her concerns. It has to do with the difference in density between the black shape and the thin lines, the occupation of space by these parts, but also with the way in which a third element, an organic line of sewn metal, enters the works, like a collage, which in a way, it undoes the rigorous frontality of the drawings.
Each step is a methodical activity. On paper, the artist spends more than an entire pencil to fill in a rectangle, for example, in the top left corner. In these forms, there is no indication of what is behind them; everything is filled with layers and layers of pencil gestures.
Such heavy stains rest their gravity on a bed of horizontal lines, which act there as ground for the more pronounced forms. The lines do not occupy the entire surface. In the space of the paper, a point is defined where these lines begin and where they stop. They remain regular, as if establishing only one possible balance point in a void that is not measurable, legible, or capable of being read through schemes.
Where the shape is stopped, the continuity of the horizontals is interrupted. Under the black, a grid diagram is formed, with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines coming from one side and the other. Thus, the shape thickens the lines, making everything dark beneath it.
The relationship between the black shape and the grid is sometimes just the relationship of weight, but in some works, especially the most recent ones, the lines act almost like metaphysical shadows of the object. In fact, they are shadows without the same regularity as the polygons that the artist superimposes on them. In some, the grids are not always filled in, creating blank spaces.
Either way, there is something stable about these islands surrounded by white paper. In fact, one can believe that something has remained, we have some certainty, there is a form planted on solid ground. With hard work and hard work, there is some regularity to hold on to in the midst of a place in disarray.
It doesn't last long. Next to the design, a metallic thread stitches sinuosity curves, suggesting a deeper space than the flat geometric shapes. In front of these lines and metals glued onto the drawing, we have the impression of an indefinite space, between flatness and some type of depth. Similar to what was called emptiness in Mira Schendel's work.
In larger, vertical works, the tension between regular form and space is accentuated. Sewing ties together misaligned papers. The edges of some clash with those of others. What is common is the continuity of the black shape. She appears like a totem, looming between one role and another. The stain occupies almost the entire surface. It does not appear, however, that this graphite column is joined by welding. They are heavy stains piled up. The adjustment makes one think of a more precarious balance than that of a beam. Maybe heavy stones in a pile.
Even here, however, the effort seems to be to maintain this formal relationship stable, pacified, an element that time does not corrode. The achievement of some type of constancy and poise is achieved here through technique. In the case of Sandra Antunes, from a persistent and meditative type of drawing. It starts nowhere. After some horizon is defined, the line suggests another, which calls to the next until you have firm ground and can do something from it.