Exhibition view: Corpos Celestes, Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain. Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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With this exhibition, Corpos Celestes (celestial bodies), their third solo show at Galeria Vera Cortês, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain went back to their readings about the theme of the cosmos. They started with the names of faraway stars situated in three constellations: Aquila, Sagitta and Equuleus. The names Alshain, Libertas, Altair, Tarazed, Okab, from the first; Sansuna, Sham and Uruk, from the second; and Kitalpha, from the third, were converted in a font called Helvetica Concentrated. This font was developed by the artists in collaboration with Jiri Skala, in 2003. Each Helvetica letter is placed within a circle whose dimension varies depending on the amount of ink needed for its printing. This way, there is a correspondence between the roman alphabet written in Helvetica to different circles that depend on the printed area of each letter. The circles can be combined and when overlapped with different opacities, they define a group with the letters of each word, so to each group of overlapped circles corresponds a word. In 2007, Detanico and Lain made a series of digital prints titled Star Names, based on the names of the stars visible to the naked eye listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest. The way they were composed on the walls of Galeria Vera Cortês, in 2015, in the exhibition sobre o céu, showed an organized dispersion, close to the distances and relative orientations of these stars in the firmament.
Exhibition view: Corpos Celestes, Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain. Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Helvetica Concentrated (2003, Detanico, Lain, Skala)
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In Corpos Celestes, that follows the recent installation Ursa Maior, 2021, concentric circles associated with the names of the stars were made in mirrored metal surfaces and cut according to the dimensions of each letter of the word. These cuts were opened one on top of the other at 60° angles, which gave them their spherical shape. It is clear the reference to old celestial globes used to map the skies or to Rodchenko’s suspended constructions made in 1921. Making them three-dimensional also allowed the placement of these stars in the gallery space, in an equivalent way as the coordinates of their observation, which is to say, the position of each star is determined by its perception in the sky, and the height by the distance of each star from the earth. In this sense, the gallery space was encoded by these non-Euclidean coordinates and positions the observer and their movements in a direct relationship with these stars and therefore different from its usual meanings.
Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain, Aquila (Corpos Celestes), 2022. Mirrored stainless steel laser cut. Alshain ø 62,12 cm; Libertas ø 60,39 cm; Altair ø 64,13 cm; Tarazed ø 60,39 cm; Okab ø 70, 86 cm.Unique
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Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain, Sagitta (Corpos Celestes), 2022. Mirrored stainless steel laser cut. Sansuna ø 68,81 cm; Sham ø 68,80 cm; Uruk ø 64,40 cm. Unique
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Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain, Equuleus (Corpos Celestes), 2022. Mirrored stainless steel laser cut. Kitalpha ø 65,63 cm. Unique
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The work Ora (Radiante), 2022, occupies another dimension, the two-dimensional surface. If the diagram that exhibits the constellations Aquila, Sagitta and Equuleus, defined the stars from the two dimensions of Helvetica Concentrated, expanding them to other dimensions, the series of radiante paintings, with their golden backgrounds that presume that the multidimensional space of quantum gravity is codified by the pictorial surface. It is a golden square, formed by a tryptic, where on each panel white lines are drawn, which maintain between them a concentric divergent relationship. Detanico and Lain established in 2018 the system radiante, which consisted in dividing a golden square in a regular grid of 10 ordinates and 4 abscissae, placing each of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet in one of the 27 rectangles obtained, plus the empty space marking the centre from which they made 26 straight white lines diverge, with an identical angle distributed by the 360°, to the sides of the square. Each golden rectangle made up of segments of the radiating white lines now signifies the letter of the alphabet in the group that corresponds to it, and the visible difference between these rectangles, that allows them to be connected to a letter of the alphabet are the straight lines that cross them and their inclinations. In Ora, the three letters correspond to the three panels, and the difference between the lines in each plane allows us to identify them in relation to the alphabet. Ora in the Nigerian language Kabou means sun; when saying it out loud in Portuguese, it’s a homophone word of “hour”, which brings closer the ray filled sun clock suggestion of the painting of the three elements; ora also is not phonologically far from “gold”, which is redundant and credible when referencing the paintings’ surface.
Exhibition view: Corpos Celestes, Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain. Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain, Ora (Radiante), 2022. Sun in Kabou language (Nigeria). Gold leaf on wood, 3 panels. 150 × 50 cm (each). Unique
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Sun and star are two names for the same thing, but they can hold different aspects. There is no similitude between the painting and the sculptures in this exhibition, but there are connections. Both are built by the deviations to which the several regimes of signs are subjected to, in the way they are translated. Despite being systematic, they dismiss the claim that the system was founded on a principle or with a final purpose, and they operate in an abstract way mixing expressions and contents, drawing results that are reorganized in diagrammatic structures. Like a space telescope, they ignore the distinction between the artifice and the natural, or the word, the digit, and the image in their contemplation of the firmament.
Angela Detanico (1974) and Rafael Lain (1973), were born in Caxias do Sul, Brazil, and they live and work in Paris. The fact that their studies were in semiotics and graphic design, respectively, is not a far stretch from the work they have developed together since 1996. It was mainly after Utopia (2001) that their work began a process of transcodification, developed widely in the works that followed and that consisted in the correspondence between the letters of the Roman alphabet and two series of drawings: one that alluded to Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist architecture, and another that alluded to elements of an urban practice. The images verbally combined established complex meanings between text and image using a sentence of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
– Pedro Lapa, 2022
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Bio
Angela Detanico (1974) and Rafael Lain (1973) are Brazilian artists living and working in Paris.
Their work has been shown in different countries and venues such as Palais de Tokyo and Grand Palais, (France); Moderna Museet (Sweden); CCS Bard Hessel Museum (USA); Mudam (Luxemburg); National Museum of Contemporary Art (Greece); ICC (Japan); Laboratorio de Arte Alameda (Mexico); Malba (Argentina); and Henry Moore Institute (England).
They took part in several international exhibitions as 3rd Media City Seoul, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2006, 10th Bienal de la Havana and the 26th, 27th and 28th São Paulo Biennials.
They presented individual exhibitions at Jeu de Paume, Musée de l’Abée Sainte-Croix and Musée Zadkine (France), Museu Coleção Berardo (Portugal), Fundação Iberê Camargo and Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Brazil).
In 2004 they received the Nam June Paik Award, in Germany.
In 2007, they represented Brazil at the 52nd Venice Biennial.
They are authors of several public art works, including a permanent installation for the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a piece commissioned by the Louvre Museum for its new Conservation Center in Liévin.
