Building Blocks, 2011. Elba Benítez Gallery. Photos: M.A Guerreiro
The last September, Fragateiro Fernanda opened an interesting display in the gallery's Madrid Elba Benitez, entitled Deep Space, Shallow Space (Espacio profundo, espacio superficial).
There, las esculturas realizadas se componen por cajas de metal pulido y tamaño exacto que encierran libros y revistas de arquitectura perfectamente encajados, dejando escapar solamente en sus lomos las líneas de color que expresan un contenido encapsulado de aquellas obras fotografiadas y publicadas.
The Portuguese sculptor makes a brilliant formal metaphor how contemporary architecture often be reduced to images and words enclosed in books and professional journals.
By Ideas neoplastic compositions that recall German avant-garde years 20 and patterns extracted from the minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd and Carl Andre, has built a critical discourse with the latest colonization of architecture by the mass media and business marketing.
The concept explicit in this work is to verify the perversion of a phenomenon that has gained absolute dominance in the certification of the canon of contemporary architecture: That which is not published does not exist for the story.
The existence and continuity of architectural brands today are totally dependent on the impacts that their works produced, specialized in the media and in various channels for mass communication. Accordingly, architectural journals, exhibitions and collections published-that since the historiography and criticism of architecture are made- have acquired a key role in the course of recent decades, for those who want to project architects and have a market relevance.
However, century in the transit of the situation has changed radically. With the advent of the Internet and it is not enough to access the consciousness of certain persons and groups who have been exercising architectural control marketing. This sample is to certify the gradual extinction of the system that was based on the action of renowned critics and exclusive construction paper platforms for mass screening projects and selected works. In the process of transition to digital, we have experienced in the last decade, those usual forms will go gradually losing its hegemonic role and the mechanisms of diffusion of architectural experiences will be becoming more complex and subtle. Within that system is verifiable previous loss of control exercised in a fierce and thus elitist, therefore, will be producing a transfer of that function to the benefit of new players immaterial.
It is evident that the traditional platforms referred to earlier, and especially architecture magazines, are being progressively replaced by databases, blogs and digital guides available on the Internet that offer, for the time being, more collections panoramas open to the participation of all. In the space dedicated to the exhibition of architectural news, daily exercised in the past by those products published on paper, is being replaced by other more flexible and dynamic platforms. For example, is the case of Plataforma Arquitectura, WikiArquitectura and blog Edgar González in our language
In future professional marketing actions will go increasingly difficult due to the vastness of sources and impacts of the Internet. The professional reputation management in the network will require the assistance of specialists who devote intense effort to the placement of the images and products in the minds of potential clients and consumers about with little time available and increasingly besieged.
With his sculptures, Fragateiro gravedigger plays the role of a way to understand the dissemination of recent architecture. Here are some samples of his work and his own artistic project explanations made.
Double sided bookcase floor, 2010. Arratia Beer Gallery
Modern Architecture without Architects, 2011
Fernanda Fragateiro, space involved. The Cultural ,03/10/2011
A brick with another. The Country, 15/10/2011
Deep Space, Shallow Space. Elba Benítez Gallery, 15/09/2011
