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Untitled

Original title: Sin título

Adolfo Schlosser

1986

Clay, straw, soot, grease and iron

Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 120 cm

Reference: ACF0531

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Schlosser’s work has been described as extraterritorial, and it has been said that he has received no influence whatever from art history and cannot be compared to any other artist. Even chronological divisions make little sense when it comes to analysing his work, since it is characterised by a continuity that defies classification by periods or moments. His pieces are indeed absolutely original in both senses of the word: different from the general run, and the first in a series of things that follow one after the other. His sculptures—most of the works of his maturity are sculptures, though he also produced drawings and photographs—refer to woods, animals, instruments, tools and household objects, to simple geometrical shapes (primarily the circle and the ellipse), and to situations the viewer must face. The materials he uses are not among those that might be considered traditional in the discipline; never marble or hard stone. He does, however, use wood, though not carved but obtained naturally and cleverly curved so that the branch remains a branch, but the form speaks the language of art. Other materials include tanned and sewn skins, perhaps a memory of his time in Iceland; wild mushrooms he gathers on his walks; and others such as granite, paraffin, soot, silk, string, horsehair, ash, glass and pieces of mirrors. Patricio Bulnes, a pioneering and leading scholar of his work, claims that ‘to construct a language of his own, Schlosser needs to make the materials go crazy.’ The two pieces in the collection, which were created around the same time, combine metal and adobe. The first work (1987), a metal sheet on which clay and straw are superimposed, has something organic about it. The second (1986) consists of rods that form a tripod from which what we might identify as a rustic pot hangs by a string. However, its primitive presence and the sophistication and polish of the finish arouse a sacred feeling of strangeness, as if we were looking at something from an alien culture, but which nevertheless calls to us.