ANTONI

2021

ANTONI

2021

Polyester, glass, crystal, cork, found objects, light system, gold leaf, metal

275 x 250 x 150 cm

LD-OBJ-00002/22

© Ligia Dias

Collection Frac Normandie, France (acquisition 2023)

Ligia Dias : ANTONI

Antoni Gaudí invented an original method to shape his architectures. He made prototypes made of chains suspended from the ceiling, to which he attached weights. The spectacular images of these models gave ANTONI its name. But the small bags of ochre-colored sand have given way to a set of elements that have been part of Ligia Dias's formal vocabulary for years and replay the mix of high and low that characterizes her work.

Suspended on a large net, champagne corks, pearls, gold leaf charms and Swarovski crystals stand alongside small modest objects (souvenir key rings, beer caps, metallic chains). The whole is illuminated by a system of LEDs and bulbs that completes the device. ANTONI is thus a kind of retrospective of the work of Ligia Dias, in the form of a luminous piece.

ANTONI also plays with the combination of functional and ornamental elements that characterizes almost all of her work, whether she is making jewelry objects, pieces of jewelry or mirrors with a high sculptural coefficient, or whether she is thinking of displays that are as formally precise as what they are supposed to host and show. Is it a sculpture, or a design work? The question is as trivial as it is intractable and the answer depends, as it often does, on the exhibition context and on the choices made for hanging. At the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, where it was exhibited all summer, the piece was shown in a resolutely sculptural manner, hung high between large white walls, almost frozen. Here, the experience is radically opposed and plays on proximity. ANTONI occupies the whole space, and one can immerse oneself endlessly in the thousand details that constitute it. The exhibition thus proposes a domestic fiction: in an inhabited space, illuminated by this étrange disproportionate chandelier, a current of air could make the charms tinkle softly, and create a small music of interior, sweet, and full of good energies.

Jill Gasparina, 2021

Photos Annik Wetter, Etienne Malapert

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