Orbital Displacements
In her current exhibition at Zipper Gallery, artist Ana Holck presents four new series of sculptures titled Suspensos (Suspended), Expansíveis (Expandable), Axiomas (Axioms), and Laçados (Lassoed), crafted from stainless steel spring tape and ceramic. Continuing the explorations she displayed in her exhibition Entroncados, enroscados e estirados (Entangled, Twisted, and Stretched) at Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, 2023, Holck delves into the three-dimensionality of line in space and its expansive force, starting from the line as a guiding thread of her work since the early 2000s.
An architect by training, Holck has always been drawn to urban structures and construction sites, where she found forms that she transformed into sculptures and installations through rearticulation exercises. By using prefabricated or pre-cast elements, often in concrete, her works subverted the utilitarian character of these simple, serial forms, occupying space in unexpected ways. Structures of bridges, pavements, and towers transformed into new objects that mimicked improbable constructions made from industrial materials.
Through the act of displacement, the artist created sculptures that established new drawings within the space. The interplay between urban space and the art space opened up the possibility of a new perception of these elements—particularly a certain lightness in these raw structures that often go unnoticed in the city experience. At the same time, the prominence of autonomous forms, disconnected from their original purpose, pointed to an experience of constant destruction familiar to those inhabiting large cities: a landscape of skeletal ruins from abandoned constructions. Hollow structures whose ruins resemble exposed urban skeletons. In this sense, her works carry a blend of rawness and beauty that engages the viewer.
In her current sculptures, Holck employs lighter, more malleable elements, such as ceramic tubes she produces in her studio, which function as nodes structuring the steel lines in space. While the aseptic look of prefabricated materials and their corresponding serial rationality still prevail, these visual qualities are softened by an allusion to the free, gestural quality of the circular expanding forms. Lines float in space as metallic arcs, sometimes regular and sometimes suggesting a more chaotic progression. This composition results from an invisible equilibrium between the spring’s force and the restraining activity of the ceramic tubes, evoking a subtle dance between two opposing movements.
Ana Holck’s recent works underscore and reinvent her connection to the constructive sculpture tradition, updating ideas of the Möbius strip and its continuous circularity, along with the developments it found in Brazilian art through the invention of the organic Neoconcrete line and its reversibility between exterior and interior sculptural space. However, by using rigid materials, restrained by an anonymous and direct gesture, these works also reflect skepticism toward the modern belief in nature's docile, fluid malleability, highlighting the inflection point at which, as a society, we now find ourselves.
