Renata Lucas: Revolving Spaces

With minimal architectural intervention, conceived for the recently closed exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Brazilian artist transforms – imperceptibly – our perception of the site.

'Architecture is the body of a place—it directs the use, the possible pathways, the flows through which information, light, air and communication will pass; it metabolises what happens inside.' Renata Lucas (1)

Site specificity and architectural interventions form the nucleus of the Brazilian artist Renata Lucas's work. These interventions mostly consist of minimal displacements of architecture that play on perception in such a way that one could almost pass by without noticing them.

Constructed on site, or in public space and then integrated into everyday life, these architectural interventions rely on a participatory element for the experience as a whole to work to its full potential.

With intrinsic references to the specifics of the site, as well as to its history, her work is often able to generate communication between different types of spaces, such as interiors and exteriors, for example: borders are crossed, holes are drilled and walls are cut.

In her new work, Kunst-Werke, 2010 (Cabeça e cauda de cavalo), Lucas made two interventions at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, in Berlin. In the first, she relocates the pavement and in the second, she makes a circular cut in the floor. The positioning of the pavement and of the doorsill at the front of the central courtyard has been adjusted by 7.5 percent (see images). Inside the exhibition space, she has cut a second circle into the floor, which is split in half by the position of the wall. This floor then becomes a circular revolving surface on which visitors are able to walk between the interior and the exterior. Territories are crossed (see images).

Even though her construction process can sometimes present considerable practical difficulties, her interventions show a considerable degree of subtlety. She says of her work that she turns the background into a protagonist; that she splits the world into two sets '…nature is the given thing: the landscape, the architectural, urban setting of the place at hand; this is where I intervene. Fiction is my intervention…' (2) Angelique Campens


(1) Interview with Renata Lucas, by Adriano Pedrosa Renata Lucas (Los Angeles: The California Institute of the Arts/REDCAT, 2007), 54
(2) Ibid.
Renata Lucas, 
<i>Kunst-Werke, 2010 (Cabeça e cauda de cavalo)</i> Installation view 
KW Institute for Cotemporary Art. Photo Uwe Walter.
Courtesy the artist
Renata Lucas, Kunst-Werke, 2010 (Cabeça e cauda de cavalo) Installation view KW Institute for Cotemporary Art. Photo Uwe Walter. Courtesy the artist
Renata Lucas, 
<i>Kunst-Werke, 2010 (Cabeça e cauda de cavalo)</i> Installation view 
KW Institute for Cotemporary Art. Photo Daniel Steegman. Courtesy the artist
Renata Lucas, Kunst-Werke, 2010 (Cabeça e cauda de cavalo) Installation view KW Institute for Cotemporary Art. Photo Daniel Steegman. Courtesy the artist

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