Wall Drawings

Iran do Espírito Santo

This summer and fall the IKG investigates the experience of drawing by presenting a large-scale installation by Sao Paulo, Brazil-based Iran Do Espírito Santo. The well-known artist is in residence at ACAD throughout June, culminating in a retrospective of his wall drawings that will cover most of the 4,000 square foot IKG. The undertaking involves precise drafting and an intensive workshop of drawing and painting by a team of supporting artists. Under Espírito Santo’s direction, his head studio technician, Juliana Kase Tanno guides Brazilian and Alberta artists in a unique, collaborative drawing technique. The team comprises Juan Sebastian Castro Cordeiro, Helio Bartsch, Leopoldo Alejandro Ponce Valdivieso and the noted photographer, Mauro Restiffe. Recent ACAD graduates in the workshop include Pamela Norrish, Sean MacAlister, Kat Garland, Kelsey Fraser, and Hannah Doerksen. 

Iran Do Espírito Santo (b. 1963) mines an ambiguous middle ground or grey area in which to place intrusions, obstacles, new materials and light as transformal elements. In doing so he produces some of the most significant site-specific installations in the world, exploring the subtle and visually un- stable spaces between the concrete and the abstract. He seeks ways to critically engage or unhinge high modernist ideals associated with “progressive” architecture and design. In this middle space or gap Iran Do Espírito Santo combines wit and paradox. Within this gap is a contribution that is not figurative per se and it is formally nonspecific without being wholly abstract. It is perhaps the transformal qualities of his work that are most suggestive of a novel artmaking strategy.

Santo’s approach to large-scale drawings is idiosyncratic, suggesting a sleek blend of influences derived in part from Minimalist strategies of reductive materials, repetition, geometry and subtle visual shifts. His drawings, proposed as an installation of related wall pieces created over the last twenty years are bound by a refined simulacra of common, style-conscious geometric forms altered or abstracted to varying degrees. He approaches a wide range of objects/images to skew expectations of their representation and experience. The combination of forms in matte paint are beguiling. A large square in black is carefully etched in minute detail, suggesting a faux ebony wood grain. Gallery two becomes a sophisticated grey scale mural that may appear to reflect and absorb light simultaneously in a pulsating drive of vertical forms that fade to grey- white and disappear altogether. It is as if a tall curtain or alter has been hung on the walls to suggest something more concrete can be found beyond the modulation of the grey scale. A wall of black, white and grey bricks in gallery one becomes a different exercise in grey scale. The perfect individual bricks are immediately recognizable in their composition but their reductive Op Art visual vibrations draw attention once again to a quality of light that deserves further explanation.

Iran Do Espírito Santo's work has appeared in numerous international solo and group exhibitions including Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art Sao Paulo, the Istanbul Biennale, the Venic Biennale, The Power Plant, Toronto, the MAXXI (Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome), Montréal Musée des beaux arts (Biennale de Montréal: Crack the Sky), Plug In ICA, Winnipeg and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

Banner image by Richard Rhodes.