12 may, 2005 - 5 july, 2005 /

Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro, Madrid

Exhibition view. Regina Silveira. Lumen, 2005 — Exhibition view. *Regina Silveira. Lumen*, 2005

The work of Regina Silveira (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1939) has palpable associations with concrete poetry and experiments with the impact of Minimalism and Pop Art. That said, by and large Silveira is concerned with the interplay between light and shade, systems of visual representation, the problems of perspective and the illusion of volumes. Her work, influenced by Iberê Camargo and Marcel Duchamp, focuses on the critique and dismantling of traditional codes of representation as well as the ironic interplay between conceptual deviations and the solemnity and anachronism of classical canons. Furthermore, Silveira is interested in the exploration of common three-dimensional objects and architectural vacuums that are able to work as spaces that mesmerise. These spectrums are reflected in the huge shadow patterns originating from sources of imaginary light - sometimes paradoxical - to indicate absence; thus the viewer has limited mental references with which to place these architectural elements of space, walls, furniture and objects.

Silveira has always drawn on her experience as teacher in various schools, for instance the School of Communication and Arts in the University of São Paulo, and is hugely dedicated to art teaching and the use of new mediums of technical reproduction and other technological resources that she uses imaginatively in her work. She has also taught numerous prominent artists from new generations in Brazil.

Light is the core theme running through Lumen, the project created for the Palacio de Cristal in the Retiro Park in Madrid, as it poetically engages with the building’s architecture and the surrounding environment. Its involvement is conceived as inseparable to the building with the capacity to transform the architecture through insertions that alter its visuality and meaning. For Silveira, the Palacio de Cristal constitutes an enormous receptacle of natural light, a colossal transparent box, through which the light of the sky passes with no opaque mediums other than the diaphanous and open network of the sheets of glass. Light is the element that gives meaning to the conception of the three pieces featuring in the project, and is key to the articulation of dialogue that is set up with the Palacio's architecture.