- Artist
- Cristina Iglesias born 1956
- Medium
- Steel
- Dimensions
- Object, each: 1830 × 1200 × 15 mm
displayed: 2400 × 3300 × 4700 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased with assistance from Tate International Council 2006
- Reference
- T12135
Summary
Pavilion Suspended in a Room I 2005 is comprised of a series of latticed panels made of braided wire, which are suspended horizontally and vertically to create a tent-like structure. Two openings provide intriguing access points through which the viewer can penetrate the interior of the work and further explore the complex layered panels, which offer an ambiguous sense of transparency. Although the filigreed screens appear abstract, on closer inspection words can be found embedded in them, taken from Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science-fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973).
Iglesias uses natural and man-made materials to create large-scale sculptures and environments. These spaces within spaces mediate between opposites of enclosure and openness, the public and private, fragility and strength, and exterior and interior worlds. Latticed panels appear frequently in Iglesias’s work and form an important category in her oeuvre. These works invoke Moorish decorative schemes and invariably draw on literary and philosophical references. Pavilion Suspended in a Room I relates to a series the artist began in the late 1990s known as Celosía (meaning both jealousy and a slated shutter or blind in Spanish). In these earlier pieces the latticed screens were installed at obtuse angles, forcing the viewer to navigate through oddly shaped enclosures.
As a more formally arranged architectural structure, Pavilion Suspended in a Room I echoes the walls and ceiling of the environment in which it is situated. It depends on the larger, enclosed space to offer the shelter which its title suggests, but which its woven, fragmented walls and roof cannot supply. Although made of wire, and suspended from robust steel cables, the floating structure appears weightless. This sense of fragility is mirrored in the patterns which fall beyond the structure as light permeates its punctured spaces. These configurations of light form a non-material yet vital element of the artwork, which viewers traverse as they move around the structure. The effect is a less a sense of being enclosed, than being surrounded.
Two studies for Iglesias’s suspended pavilions, created in the same year, are also held in Tate’s collection: Study for Suspended Pavilions 2005 (Tate T12967) and Study for Suspended Pavilions 2005 (Tate T12968). Iglesias is also represented by Untitled (Diptico XXI) 2005 (Tate T12142), which is comprised of two silkscreens on copper panels.
Further reading
Ernesto Menédenez-Conde, ‘Cristina Iglesias: Daydreams and Spaces’, Art Experience, Spring 2011, http://mariangoodman.com/sites/default/files, accessed 29 June 2016.
Lucy Askew
October 2005
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