Piero Atchugarry Gallery presents Celestial Nouns, an exhibition of recent sculptures and installations specifically conceived for the gallery space by Sāo Paulo born and based gallery artist, Artur Lescher.

Influenced by the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement of the 1950s, Lescher’s work seeks to exist as poetic gestures in space devoid of function, calling instead for spatial situations that simultaneously hold tension, balance, movement and the prevailing force of gravity. The exhibition title serves a dual meaning, the word “celestial” in Celestial Nouns means “of the sky” in the artist’s native language (Portuguese), a personal tribute to the turquoise skies of Uruguay that the artist experienced many years ago during his inaugural exhibition at Tierra Garzón. Simultaneously, Celestial Nouns redefines the lexicon of perception and architecture through the lens of physics and an interest in the viewer’s spatial awareness.

Transforming the gallery’s existing layout, Lescher reconfigures the site’s architecture to produce an ensemble of intricate pieces that appear to meld together to create one architectonic experience constructed of individual elements, amplifying the perception of space through the bodily senses. The viewer is placed in a suspended condition, a similar experience to looking upward at the infinite expanse of the sky, also known as the celestial sphere.

Transforming the gallery’s existing layout, Lescher reconfigures the site’s architecture to produce an ensemble of intricate pieces that appear to meld together to create one architectonic experience constructed of individual elements, amplifying the perception of space through the bodily senses. The viewer is placed in a suspended condition, a similar experience to looking upward at the infinite expanse of the sky, also known as the celestial sphere. Using natural elements, such as metal, brass, copper and wood, that have been reproduced by means of industrial processes, Lescher’s body of work emphasizes clean geometric lines, achieving a highly-refined, minimal, yet meticulous aesthetic.

Adopting the notion that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts,” the works presented in tandem—some suspended, others upheld by multi-filament threads attached to the gallery walls—transcend their sculptural character and break with their individual boundaries to create a multiplicity of potentialities. Creating a double image effect, Sextante (2018) and Frank 02 (2019) converge, making it difficult to delineate where one work begins and another ends, the observer is asked to look intensely again and again. Only by following the contours of the threads of each suspended object can the viewer fully comprehend the structural integrity and spatial relationships between each. In Celestial Nouns, Lescher plays with our optics and implores viewers to construct different compositions wherein perceptual limitations are liberated.

Artur Lescher was born in São Paulo/SP, Brazil, 1962, where he lives and works. For more than thirty years, Lescher presents a solid work as a sculptor, which results from a research around the articulation of materials, thoughts and forms. In this sense, the artist has on the particular, uninterrupted and precise dialogue with both architectonic space and design, and on his choice of materials, which can be metal, stone, wood, felt, salts, brass and copper, fundamental elements to highlight the power of this discourse. Even if Lescher’s work is strongly linked to industrial processes, achieving extreme refinement and rigor, his production does not have the form as the only purpose, actually, it goes beyond it.