Andrew's violin

An image is not a substitute for anything
Louise Lawler

This is possible in a large total installation: the absorbed, distracted spectator walks around it slowly,

observes, moves away, reflects and moves closer again. the peculiar atmosphere

helps him concentrate, delve deep into his memory and move from one level of his thoughts to another. Because a well-designed installation must work on every level: from the most banal and profane to

the most intellectual and spiritually elevated.

Ilya Kabakov

Miguelangelo Buonarroti removed the stone that was unnecessary so that the image inside could touch the space and Eduardo Chillida filled the interior of the stone with air. Between both proposals, there have been many works and philosophies of art that take space as a point of reference. Even painting, the two-dimensional art par excellence, has insistently sought to fill the canvas with space and also construct a theory of it. Referring back to the dutch masters or to Velázquez is the easiest way of seeing these, let's be frank, artistic obsessions.

In other directions, some creators have sought what has been considered as a total work, that which brings together every art form under one umbrella. When the filmmaker arrived, there were those who thought that the road had been opened to achieve image in movement, sound and a close bond with reality. However, as on so many other occasions, it was merely a new proposal, with a new form, with a completely new tool. However, what was important was the purpose, the same as when photography arrived, or performance or cubism or futurism… without considering other lucubrations, all these initiatives include an attempt at pursuing a pipe dream, perhaps precisely because it is known to be a utopia.

The diversified field

Standing before the first pieces of steel cables by Andrew Gangoiti is, to a certain extent, like going back to the earthworks of the 1960s. The spirit of the artists of and art, which includes fully inserting their works in the natural environment, is also involved in these sculptures, which change  the landscape scenario and raw nature for another that is more humanised and compressed: architecture. More specifically, the architecture of the exhibition spaces in which he intervenes. Through fine lines of stainless steel that outline geometric  hapes (like Fred Sandback once did), he invades the empty space that is presented before him, but he does not subjugate it. In other words, he does interventions with and for the architectural space in a profound atmosphere of respect and gives it new meaning that brings forth a rereading of it, its restructuring.

Consequently, the void and other spatial elements, which in another context might go by unnoticed, are given  greater presence and monumentality. Besides this, his relationship with architecture is also formalistic. Andrew builds his sculptures as if he were building the safest of buildings. His sketches are technical drawings, genuine building plans full of measurements, sizes and scales; and his work methodology (methodical and highly accurate) is reminiscent of the way an architect works. His works gives off a solidity like the four walls of a building.

Symbiosis and mimesis with the environment. That is the relationship between sculpture and architecture in this artist's works. Both protagonise the formation of a complicated dissolution. The limits of where one begins and the other ends are blurred. That is why the term "sculpture" is inaccurate for these artistic hybrids. Perhaps we could resort to the terminology used by Rosalind Krauss for her Expanded Field and build our "axiomatic structure" in the place between "architecture" and "non- architecture".