Text by Julien Bismuth / Photos by Larissa Kreili
The objects on view in this exhibition extend through different forms of consciousness. One could imagine that their production did as well. A doorknob is not just an outlined aesthetic object, but also a textured and weighted shape for the hand that grips it. A chair disappears from sight the moment one sits on it. What remains is the length of its seat, the height of its back, the temperature of its surface, its obduracy or softness. The ladder in the exhibition is a visual form in space when one stands in front of it, and a different perspective onto the space when one stands on it. Different modes of perception of an object bleed into one another in de Freitas’s work. Whether for the viewer or the sitter, they slip past purely visual forms of awareness into relationships of a more elusive and embedded kind.
The mirror he made for the exhibition is a mirror ‘for two’, whose definition as such immediately rubs against the idea one has of a mirror as a surface on which to look at oneself. Instead, this mirror becomes an elegantly pragmatic tool for a thought experiment: to see, be seen, and see oneself seeing and being seen at the same time and on the same plane. That same logic extends to the other works on view, each linked to a quotidian activity: sweeping, showering, opening doors and drawers, sitting down to write or eat or work at a table. The objects are both designed for these activities, as well as for the ancillary gestures and interactions that they provoke: moving one’s hand around an object unconsciously in between moments of use, letting one’s gaze drift along the wood grain patterns of a writing desk, standing on a ladder to estrange oneself from the familiarity of the room.
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The relationship between use and function in de Freitas’s work is an invitation to these thought-experiments that extend to the sensing body. Some of his objects are loosely defined by their function. The “sensorial objects” or “playthings for children,” for example, do not have a rigidly defined function because both link to the realm of play, which is inherently experimental and open-ended. His more determined pieces distinguish themselves from their function by way of their shapes, and what they evoke or inspire. The most striking example of this is the “Scream Drain,” whose lines are inspired by the rippling outlines of Munch’s composition. Its form both recalls the sound waves of a scream and the undulations of a draining stream of water.
There is an undeniable generosity to de Freitas’s practice. His works allow for various forms of slippage and displacement, not to accentuate a disconnect, but rather to rekindle continuities between their aesthetic and sensorial dimensions. The photographs inserted into handmade frames of fused glass are culled from an ongoing photography project that de Freitas has been doing for over a decade, circulated to contacts by email. Yet in this exhibition, they function as placeholders that can be swapped out, like the display photographs placed in any store-bought frame. The images are often of objects, placed by use and circumstance in various settings. That is the primary intention behind these objects: that they slip seamlessly into daily life, not as works to be contemplated, but as tools to be handled and worn by use.
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