Tiago Carneiro da Cunha (b. 1973)

Looking at Tiago Carneiro da Cunha's earlier work, one can tell he has always been concerned - perhaps even to an exagerated degree - with the responsibility of producing an object, measuring the consequences of such an act as if it involved some specific ecology: the ecology of art in its physical and developmental environment.

After a number of (quite interesting) attempts to confront object-making by avoiding it, he would one day surprise us with a perfectly tangible object that looked like a jewel. The precious stone was made of plastic, a material that could never be taken as precious. As for the making, traditional Sculpture procedures, or Constructivist routines such as folds, seemed to be reaccessed but soon turned to irony: when a jewel - which would fit well as an icon standing for (fetichistic) corruption - is presented as the sculptural result. However, that irony does not mean sarcasm, as it does not say the final word in our conversation with these works. The problems of object-making will find in these sculptures a place for negotiation and I dare say: relief, as we are confronted with the carefulness with which they are executed, and their smooth, seductive surfaces. And further relief comes when one realizes how deeply and passionately investigative they are on arts language, twisting the evident, well known path of geometrization started with Drer, through Cubism to Brazilian Neo-concrete, into shapes never before imagined. These objects are erudite, aware of where they stand in art-historical and social terms, but they are also self-aware, as their own laboriousness becomes critical of the value altributed to labor.

Erika Verzutti