El tiempo en las cosas I.
Person Leaning on their Elbow (an extra) | El tiempo en las cosas I. | Museo Amparo, Puebla
Person Leaning on their Elbow (an extra) | El tiempo en las cosas I. | Museo Amparo, Puebla
Person Leaning on their Elbow (an extra) | El tiempo en las cosas I. | Museo Amparo, Puebla

Tania Pérez Córdova

Person Leaning on their Elbow (an extra)

Year 2012
Technique

Alginate, white lacquered wood, black spray paint

Extra measurements

20 x 33 x 22 cm

Researcher

'Person Leaning on Their elbow (an extra)' came about from research on the subject and the time that Tania Perez Cordova has created in different works throughout her practice. Her sculptures, contrary to the convention that understands them as finished and static objects, are inserted in a temporality in movement that not only responds to their production process, but also to the narratives that can be generated from their forms.  

In this particular case, time is marked by its relationship with a physical event: the existence of the sculpture allows us to think about the presence of people. While its material composition is the result of a manipulation in which the corporeality of an individual intervenes, its being as an object calls for a corresponding spectator body.  

Imagining visitors to an exhibition, 'Person Leaning on Their Elbow' is a negative impression or mold that alludes to the posture that a person could take while observing this piece. Although the sculpture suggests a specific posture, the artist is interested in the moment in which a person comes face to face with the sculpture - as when viewing any work in an exhibition - and enters into a kind of ritual of observation in the that the body acquires different positions to try to enter the hole or void that the piece forms.  

It is at that precise moment that the sculpture ceases to be a fixed object in time and inserts itself into a narrative that happens every time the piece is exhibited and viewed. For example, the staging of an exhibition can be thought of as a scenario where different relationships and dynamics occur at the same time. In the game of presences between works and people, Perez Cordova thinks of 'Person Leaning on Their Elbow' as if it were an extra figure within the multiple sequential stories that take place there.  

This figure of the "extra", which is alluded to in the title of the work, arises from an almost cinematographic image in which an anonymous person occupies a place within a scene that is taking place.  In this way, the sculpture takes a place within a physical event or, rather, it is also a background figure within the narratives that take place around it.  

On the other hand, as in most of her work, the artist gives fundamental importance to the raw material. In this case, the alginate allows the piece to be in a state of constant transformation; the organic properties of this material distort, shrink and twist over time, in such a way that the original shape of the sculpture is gradually lost until it becomes an abstract object.      

       

—References    

With information from the artist    

https://terremoto.mx/revista/tania-perez-cordova/

/noticias/detalle/436/portadores-de-sentido-arte-contemporaneo-en-la-coleccion-patricia-phelps-de-cisneros

 

'Person Leaning on Their elbow (an extra)' came about from research on the subject and the time that Tania Perez Cordova has created in different works throughout her practice. Her sculptures, contrary to the convention that understands them as finished and static objects, are inserted in a temporality in movement that not only responds to their production process, but also to the narratives that can be generated from their forms.  

Works in this gallery