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".
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".
However, Andrew Gangoiti's field expands further and challenges limitation. It continues to evolve. And it does so with Acoustic Elements in Sculptural Work, his latest project, based on the addition of sound as a third element in his sculptures. Now, his cables, fitted with sensors and electronic devices that emit sound, are repositioned in the space to outline new shapes that invite spectators to follow them (a spiral, a corridor, an f-hole). The sensors act as melodic alarms that warn of the presence of the foreign elements that accompany them on their itinerary. We refer to the spectator, the fundamental axis that constitutes Gangoiti's sculptural work, the piece without which it could not work as a whole. The spectator as an independent figure, with its particular characteristics, visits the works, activating sounds that are unique and unrepeatable for any other -when there are no sensors, the sound comes from musical strings that are plucked manually; a strategy that multiplies the attitudes of the work and prevents it from having one single denotation. Jacques Derrida would undoubtedly compare these pieces with his theory of deconstructionism. and he would be right. The work is open, with many possible interpretations, one for every spectator. The possible readings offered by these works will always be infinite because it could never be said that one of the readings or interpretations is correct.
Let us return to the expanded field, to that of Andrew Gangoiti. In constructions where sculpture, architecture, sound, public, technique and technology form part of an indissoluble and harmonious whole, even the cartography by José Luis Brea in Ornamento y utopía for the sculpture of the 1980s and 1990s is not enough. The outline he made of a "more expanded" field, even "more expanded than that of Krauss, which […] would enable awareness of the displacements not only in relation to formal transformations, but also and above all to those that refer to the use and public meaning of said formal displacements", now requires more space for installations that have completely saturated the inherited categories. Andrew's field is an experimental field in search of new languages that have not yet been explored, an alternative model that allows for polysemy and that extends further and further. His field is indeed a diversified field.
Oihana Cabrera