Back
Print sheet
Add to My Collection
Untitled (The Adversary)
Original title: Sin título (The Adversary)
1994
Wood, paint and adhesive tape
Dimensions: 245 x 177 x 86 cm
Reference: ACF0003
Add to My Collection
"The house", the idea of it -I am quoting the title of an exhibition on the subject held a few years ago in Madrid- has been one of the insistent motifs in the reflections of contemporary sculptors, and of thinkers and writers as well. Indeed, some of them are as much defined by their houses as by their works.
The issue cannot be summed up solely in the architectural aspects of the house, or in the formal similarities of sculpture with the notion of "house" -a notion, in fact, whose "drawing" has been with us since childhood, since there is not a child who has not traced the invented image of his or her own home-, but has to do with the idea of inhabiting, of the way in which we adapt to the spaces we live in, the type of exchanges we make inside that shelter with our fellow human beings, and the type of transactions we carry out with household objects.
In 1994 and 1995, Irazu devoted his time to exploring his imaginary of the house. He reached the point of turning it upside down; quite literally, since that is what he did with a monumental piece from 1994, Dreambox (The house), in which the roof rests on the ground, the sides have wide openings interrupted by flimsy painted brick walls, and there are no doors.
Some other pieces, among them Untitled (The Adversary), refer to that motif, in which Summer Kisses might also be fitted. If there is something merry and perverse about that work, The Adversary is disturbing and inhospitable. There are two pieces of wall (or rather, the representation of a wall) leaning against the wall of the gallery, with a wooden roof which is so narrow that it offers no shelter whatever and a narrow strip open between the two parts, which does not provide a way through to the other side, although it does enable us to see that there, behind the wall, there is only more wall.
It is said that we live where we sleep most often, and therefore where we dream most often. That may be why, in his comments on Irazu's house, José Luis Brea calls it "the house of dreams: a good house."
