Piscina

Created by Jorge Macchi especially for Inhotim, the open-air sculpture Piscina [Pool, 2009] is based on a watercolor by the artist that depicts a swimming pool resembling a telephone book with alphabetic tabs. The image is part of a series, which he began in the mid-1990s, of drawings of everyday objects in strange combinations and altered situations. For Macchi, this process is about transmitting mental images, which often evince a strong surrealistic tendency, to paper in the most direct manner. In close dialogue with the institution, he developed a site-specific recreation of this image, installing it on a farm that is part of the area to which Inhotim has expanded, as if it were part of it. In transposing the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional, Macchi aims to achieve the same urgency he seeks in the transfer of mental images into drawing, using a minimum of materials, elements and artifices. The violence of this transposition could suggest that the work is nothing more than a drawing in space, but the most striking aspect is the constructive desire that drives this operation. While dealing with the complex interplay of scales involved in the transfer of a drawing into an architectural work, the artist collaborated with Inhotim to select appropriate materials; he chose to use white cement applied like a fresco on the pool’s surface, which suggests the smoothness of a sheet of paper, and black laser-cut granite to simulate printed letters and rules. This work also has a participatory aspect, promoting an encounter between the artist’s fantastic imagery and the viewer’s physical experience. The project thus describes a trajectory from the imaginary to the real, from the dream to the body, by way of graphic design, sculpture and architecture — operating in different mediums to create a work that is unique in many ways.