Arena: Curated in dialogue with Jenni Lomax

The sculptural properties of Alexandre da Cunha’s work, Marble (2020), are difficult to determine—certainly on first sight. What appears to be a solid and weighty, fleshy-pink form is in fact an inflatable rubber ring covered by a large cotton sheet. The air-filled object offers a determined resistance to the soft fluidity of the fabric, causing it to drape onto the floor in a manner that suggests gravity and stability. Being an improbable assemblage of mundane things, Marble is in almost every way a contradiction of Sanmartino’s sculpture. However, on its own terms, it maintains a strong bodily presence that equally possesses humour and pathos.

Always observant of the materiality of objects and how they sit in the world, da Cunha carefully gathers and realigns them to form unexpected allegiances that, as with Marble, challenge perceptions of value and authority. When transported to an unfamiliar place, domestic, workaday objects and materials become themselves unfamiliar—maybe alien, maybe exotic—they also acquire an aesthetic beauty and new status. The original use and sociological meaning of these utilitarian items are never demeaned by their transformations, rather the changes reinstate the importance of society and the value of labour.

Alexandre da Cunha (b.1969) is a Brazilian-born artist who lives and works in São Paulo and London. He has referred to his practice as ‘pointing’ as opposed to ‘making’. By ‘pointing’ at existing objects in plain sight, da Cunha highlights new and unexpected meanings within the objects he chooses. This approach allows him to disentangle preconceptions and instinctive responses inherent to particular objects, restoring them with alternative modes of viewing and understanding. Given their renewed possibility, da Cunha’s sculptures inspire lush potential, illuminating everyday encounters with these ordinary materials. For instance, household cleaning objects suddenly conjure spiritual significance, while seemingly mundane industrial ready-mades echo art historical precedents.

Central to da Cunha’s practice is the ready-made. Specifically, how the ready-made is affected by narrative, history, and the results of labour. In da Cunha’s work, an object’s original design and function endures within the sculpture: a mop can be transformed into a tapestry but the narrative of the object lives on in the work. In this way, da Cunha’s sculptures constitute a microcosm which preserves the historic and economic reality of the original object. In his Mix (2012-2017) and Full Catastrophe series (2012-2013), da Cunha presents concrete mixers only lightly touched by the artist but heavily manipulated by their previous owners, confusing the role of creator while aligning the activity of labour with that of the artist. In contrast, da Cunha’s Ikebana series (2018) assembles sensitive pairings of objects. A walking stick is accented by a fragment of food packaging; a hammer is domesticated by its foundation of a wooden block; while a cake tin, golf ball, or glass bottle respectively sink into a cast of concrete.