photo: SUEMASA Mareo
L’Encyclopédie (Marble Flooring Plan of the Church of Val de Grace, Paris)
| Artist | Guillermo KUITCA |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Material/ Technique | mixed media on linen |
| Size/ Duration | H197.2 × W159.6cm |
| Copyright Notice | © Guillermo Kuitca |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2001（作品購入年月日：2001/03/30） |
| Description | Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. Lives and works there. Guillermo Kuitca started painting at the age of six and has worked in the fields of both painting and theater, finding inspiration in the work of the German choreographer Pina BAUSCH and Jorge Luis BORGES among others. Often takes as his subject matter spatial expression using beds, maps, architectural plans, theaters, and the like, winning acclaim in 1989 for an installation consisting of a number of children’s beds on which were painted maps. Kuitca blurs the boundaries between absence and presence, present and past, fiction and reality, as he seeks to grasp the intersection points where the private realm and public realm of human existence transpose, converge and separate. His work unveiled at the 2007 Venice Biennale broke fresh ground with its references to the history of modern painting. A series of works created between 1998 and 1999, the “Neufert Suite” was inspired by "Architects’ Data (Bauentwurfslehre)", a handbook written by the German architect Ernst NEUFERT. In these works he presents various architectural plans with the structural elements such as columns and walls omitted, depicting only the objects arranged inside the buildings such as the furniture and machinery. The saturation of the single color blue and the way the images have been abstracted to an extreme combine to free the works from the division of exterior and interior and enable them to diffuse. “L’Encyclopédie” is a series based on plans included in "L’Encyclopédie" (1751-1772), edited by the French philosophers Denis DIDEROT and Jean Le Rond D’ALEMBERT. Kuitca used watercolor pencils to faithfully copy the floor plans and marble floor patterns onto primed white canvases and then applied water to make the lines bleed. He also printed floor and ceiling patterns on photo paper and then dissolved them with a solution so that the images shattered into fragments. Kuitca likens these works to “a slow-motion action painting.” By transposing these reliable objects in the form of calculated, measured, and precise plans into the realm of painting, Kuitca transforms them into objects that are whimsical, absurd, and impossible to grasp. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.