Text by Pedro Köberle / Photos by Fernando Mendes
Glória, the new solo exhibition by Rafael Triboli, synthesizes the foundational aspects of his practice, bringing together techniques and resources that have long inhabited his repertoire, but now achieve an organic communication with the naturalness that constant engagement with the material brings.
One of these aspects is material frankness, where each piece appears without concealing what it is made of, as if the work serves to validate the material in its elementary state. Mahogany, cedar, imbuia, brass, bronze, and wax, and then the finishes, which here serve to emphasize what is already inherent in the wood itself. In the case of the sconces, paint applications conceal the surface to the extent that they draw the eye to what is left raw.
Rawness, incidentally, is one of the distinctive traits of Triboli’s repertoire, and it gives body to his essentially procedural approach. The raw is not equivalent to the unfinished but is a field of physical and conceptual sense that lends itself to recording physical effort. Frankness, rawness, and now rhythm. This last factor is what allows each piece of furniture to be taken as part of a pattern of changes or transformations. Graphics, grooves, grafts, and fillings repeat in different pieces but never seem automated. The simple and determined motifs that adorn Triboli’s pieces are traces of his hand, and in this sense, each surface here is a collection of gestures, a kind of visual notation that ingrains itself in the wood.
Slide to see more of TRIBOLI´s work ➝
Sometimes, as in the sconce and the coffee table, engravings or notations appear, animating the compositions with a cryptic sense. In these pieces that flirt with enigma, secrecy, and symbol, Rafael’s work acquires a plastic consistency that implicates his work in the disciplinary and conceptual field of sculpture. This tension between furniture and sculptural matrix is one of the most fruitful problems in his practice. His furniture pieces are bodies where the rhythms of manual craftsmanship, inscribed gestures, and syncopated interventions settle into things, claiming an objectuality that in turn converts into a vital presence.
Imagining a domestic environment where all these sculpture-furniture coexist means conceiving a space in which each piece invites bodily interaction: in the elegant simplicity of form and attention to texture, whether in upholstery or wood, there is always the direct treatment of the function of each object. These works bear the mark of labor and invite us to use them, to make them dynamic and alive with our own habits. Whether on the dining table or the chest, the emptiness is a call to occupation, to the relationship with the other objects that surround us and form the everyday environment of the spaces we construct by inhabiting. These are the homes of things as much as the things of the home, fitting the contours of the body and giving body to the room.
–
To see the full catalogue of Rafael Triboli click here.
