. JOÃO LOUREIRO

João Loureiro

Carla Zaccagnini

From his early sculptures, where known references are items of furniture, to his current research on architecture, João Loureiro’s work starts with the questioning of everyday actions in order to discuss matters regarding representation and the relationships between form and function and, more importantly, between inanimate objects and the habits they relate to and, also, conform with.

In a series of sculptures initiated in 1996, pieces of furniture – whose specific function determined a certain shape for them – had their formal characteristics partially altered. In a circular church bench, for example, the seat is surrounded by the back, leaving only the kneeler accessible. In other sculptures of the series, similar bench sections become individual chairs, where only the corners that would be part of the structure of the flat surfaces are present. In these tri-dimensional designs, the lateral surfaces – which seem to have been cut, and reveal what was supposed to be their interior – are coated with colors that are lighter than the ones used on the other surfaces of the structural slats.

Far from being merely formal exercises, these and other pieces of the same period are investigations into our habits and into the ways customs and tastes get imprinted onto things. To what extent – the sculptures seem to prompt us to ask – are furniture pieces and interiors molded by the preferences and insistence of their users? And in what way do the characteristics of the furniture and objects that share these spaces with us make us act or rest according to their will?

When form is perverted, function is lost. It is this void and this absence that we try to fill, in order to soothe discomfort, and return to their due positions all that is familiar in the pieces that make us rethink our relationship with the objects and the spaces we occupy with them. Built on a scale that approaches the real, and made of materials that are already filed in our memory, these sculptures are related to the body, to all that has to do with the individual in ourselves, and with the house as a home, as a space for living in as a family and where to develop interpersonal relationships.

In ways that are somewhat similar and somewhat different, recent pieces investigate the legacy of the modernistic Brazilian architecture and the constructive logic of buildings and urban areas. If, on one hand, these sculptures feature an almost tactile approximation to known materials, on the other hand, the image they bring to mind is no longer one of an individual or internal nature. The house is now a space seen from the outside. That space of the individual and of the family becomes an impenetrable solid, whose sole interest lies in its ability to combine with others to form sets of other solid objects. There is a kind of remoteness in it, be it in the movement that carries us outside from the interior space, be it in the diminishing scale of the pieces, which makes us see them from above, be it in the historical distancing, which allows us to think of heritage no longer as habits and gestures that a given space makes same-name and same-address generations repeat, but rather as the country’s cultural legacy.

One might say that “Reception, Administration, Production and Distribution” (2002) is the piece that sums up that passage from one space to another. First of all, this is just because it is a sculpture that is both a piece of furniture and a mock-up. When folded, the piece reminds us of a roll-top desk – the kind that has a high back and curved sides with a sliding cover featuring a mechanism similar to the one used in garages and shop doors. By opening each “drawer”, we find, one by one, the volumes that correspond to the four activities referred to in the sculpture’s title.

On the other hand, this work presents itself as the formalization of a thought on the activities that are the basis of life in a society. In this instance, and in a very clear way, each stage of the production and circulation of merchandise is not related to a social class, to a place in the city or countryside, to an ability or vocation – in short, to any group of individuals that organize themselves around them – but, rather, to a building, to a structure with slightly diverse physical characteristics, which occupies a particular niche in this chain of relationships.

Whereas “Reception, Administration, Production and Distribution” proposes a systematization of the organic and complex relationships that make up the structure of the economy of industrial capitalism, “Rural Module” (2002) uses the same kind of irony to rethink a system of agricultural production that is suitable to the paradigms of modernity. The proposal incorporates some of the ideas that have characterized current low-income housing projects: the rationalization of life, the organization of private spaces around the spaces designed for the use of the community as a whole, the idea of modular architecture, etc.

Each apartment building was to house two families. The area for planting reserved for each of them would occupy half of the width of the building, with the other half being occupied by the plantations of the neighboring module. Two multi-function warehouses, to be used either as storage room for produce or as schools, for example, complete the infrastructure of each pair of family nuclei. The warehouses are linked to each other by common-use octagonal green areas which preserve the native vegetation lying between the modules. A road, as dictated by necessity, cuts through the countryside.

What is at stake here is not the drafting – much less the implementation – of a viable and functional project for life and work in the country. It has to do, rather, with a speculation on modern values and on the failure of their implementation. It is a matter of analyzing how the plan adopted for construction reflects a concept of life in society, and how it can otherwise transform social relationships.

In the series titled “A Repertoire of Brazilian Modern Architecture” (2004), which comprises three small-size sculptures, certain elements exploited by architects like Lúcio Costa and Vilanova Artigas are reduced to their utmost simplicity. In an almost iconic simplifying effort, the structures consist of combinations of regular solids fused into single wooden pieces, with each module referring to a house with a rectangular base and a two-slope roof.

“Inner Patio”, for example, presents two such modules side by side, with a negative space between them. “Shed” features another of the solutions borrowed from colonial architecture, and which have been rescued by our modernist architects. A wooden latticework, of the type used in baroque jalousies, serves as a cover for the external areas on both sides of the small building. Each of the two spaces delineated by this empty surface – or by the checkered shadow it projects – is the same size as the base of the central solid.

“Concrete Box” comprises four of these wooden modules, upon which another piece, made of concrete, can be mounted at different points. The concrete structure, of a size and design similar to that of a set of two of these modules is made up solely of what would be the surface of the floor plus the front and rear façades. Keeping in mind the possibilities brought about by the introduction of this material in modern construction, the concrete piece is used in an inverted position: the tips of the triangles where the roof was supposed to begin are the points touching the floor. Thus, the larger plane projects itself over the wooden piece like a slab spanning the gap it forms.

“Norman Village” (2004) adds substance to the discussion of this repertoire. As the title suggests, the work refers to the construction of the “Vila Normanda” building in downtown São Paulo, and to the series of episodes that accompanied it. At the time, a whole row of Norman-style houses was torn down in order to allow the construction of the building that now stands there. The high-rise, which was part of the modernization of São Paulo’s city center, was built in a style that meets modern tastes and modern needs: a passage under the building permits access from one street to the next; the ground floor is wholly dedicated to shops and to services to passers-by, and is decorated with panels by Antônio Maluf. Part of the population that frequented the neighborhood was against the demolition of the houses and the construction of the building, and this caused a heated discussion on the architectural worth of both construction styles.

The sculpture in Formica and wood represents the building and the group of houses, one on top of the other. Since it can be assembled in two different positions, there is a choice between showing the high-rise upside-down and the dark-wood houses on top of it, or the other way round, with the row of houses at the bottom supporting the blue-and-white building upright.

With its three-meter width and nearly two-meter height, the size of the piece and the materials used remind us once again of pieces of furniture we are used to in our daily life. In some way, the presence of this object – whose size is familiar to us, and which is lined with known materials used in interior decoration – brings an urban problem into our domestic circles. This proximity and easy recognition facilitate our positioning in the face of an issue which – maybe because of our lack of experience in regard to public spaces, maybe because of our apathy in regard to issues that we do not consider as being of a private nature – would otherwise seem not to concern us.

Faced with this evidence, we cannot help wondering what really is valuable in architecture and, of course, whether only those assets that possess cultural value – whether of an architectural, artistic or other nature – should be preserved as a legacy and as witnesses of our history.

“Norman Village” combines, in a single piece, realities pertaining to two different moments and to two incompatible ways of understanding the city and the place of dwelling, forcing us to choose between one and the other with each assemblage of the sculpture. “Adjacent Landscapes: House with Swimming Pool”(2004), on the other hand, deals with the construction of a hybrid space that comprises the sum of the characteristics of the spaces around it.

Built from the same dark-blue acrylic material, the three elements of the sculpture – the volume serving as a house, a ramp that leads to what would be the terrace and a negative space that occupies the place of the swimming pool – cohabit harmoniously. The ramp features horizontal lines etched into the acrylic at regular intervals, which are similar to the ones separating the vertical cuts on the façade just beside. The surface of the swimming pool, which is the continuation of the same gable, combines the two directions of the lines on its surface, resulting in a checkered pattern. This gives us the impression that the spaces have contaminated each other, appearing as if the contents of one place could lend form or signification to the adjoining space.

“Secret Passage” (2003) sets a similar strategy into motion. Having been invited to develop one of his works at a small exhibition venue at the Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, in São Paulo, the artist placed his sculpture in the door that gave access to the exhibition room. There, against a wall, stood what seemed to be a four-door cupboard or closet.

Lined with white Formica, the doors feature lozenges drawn by means of small round, regular perforations. When opening the doors to the left, we find the interior of an all-white closet, with five shelves. The doors to the right – as revealed in advance by the light coming through the round holes during the day – give admittance into the empty exhibition room. The only thing we can see in there is the back side of the doors that admitted us into the room, plus the closet-size Formica-lined passage.

If this sculpture can give a new meaning to the room from the outside, “Swimming Pool” (2004) transforms the large shed for which it was designed with a minimum gesture. A carpet measuring about 3.5m x 7m covers most of the floor – nothing else is there. Featuring two shades of blue, the surface contains the drawing of a three-lane swimming pool. Despite being two-dimensional and almost entirely abstract, the work has the power of altering the perception one has of the whole space and of the structure it is in, transforming the barren and “neutral” building of the gallery into a heated-pool hall.

Once again, the artist relies on what is already known to us, on what he knows we can remember and on the complicity of the observer. In exchange, he gives us the comfort of seeing familiar, domestic materials, and our own power to activate that mechanism and be able to visualize in this particular space all the other spaces that it might become – oh, and that refreshing feeling of diving in!

Carla Zaccagnini, 2004