Sergio Camargo

Private Collection, Europe
Thence by descent to the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a few minute specks of loss to the extreme edges of some of the protruding elements, and a small number of light media accretions in isolated places, all of which are visible in the catalogue illustration, and fluoresce when examined under ultraviolet light. There are fine drying cracks to the base of some of the protruding elements.
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Executed the year he was awarded the sculpture prize by the Association of Art Critics of Sao Paulo, Relief No. 271 is a highly complex and elegant example of Camargo’s iconic white reliefs. Composed of uneven wooden cylinders agglomerated vertically and horizontally on their backboard and coated with a layer of pristine, powdery white paint, the present construction has then been mounted on to a dark wooden board. The aesthetic fracture created by the contrast of pure white monochrome with the material, elemental presence of the raw wood, opens up a dialogue between the organic and the crafted, which are here beautifully intertwined.

All the while acknowledging the fundamental essence of their medium, Camargo’s crystal-like modules projected into space generate an ever-changing kinetic spectacle of light and shade along their vibrating surface. “[Camargo’s] interest is actually based on the modulation and organisation of the pieces of wood as a whole. His choice of wood demonstrated his indifference to previous materials. With the minimum of means of a formal order, he enlivens the surface and gives it a lyrical life that is disquieting and true. His desire to render visible the multiplicity and existential fluidity of a structure which asserts itself and from which the centre of gravity has disappeared.” (Karl K. Ringstrom in Exhibition Catalogue: Bruxelles, Galerie d'Art Ravenstein, Transition : Camargo, Cruz-Diez, Guzman, Otero, Mercedes Pardo, Pillet, Soto, Vasarely, 1963, n. p., translated from French by Anthony de Kerdrel)

With its central axis featuring a cluster of wider columns that allows the structure an anchored balance, and a circumambient combination of smaller elements spawning a staccato rhythm to the shimmering dance of light, Relief No. 271 is a remarkably astute example of the artist’s highly influential and prolific oeuvre. “In his long series of reliefs, he goes back again and again to the same constructive paradigm - a cylinder and the ways it may be cut and combined - and the more he explores it, the more he articulates all its possibilities, the more he undermines its status as a paradigm, as ‘law’, making us question the sort of stability and finality we invest in paradigms. The most subtle thing, perhaps, is that Camargo does not investigate this paradox in an ideal conceptual realm but in light, in the changing light of the everyday world with its incalculable complexity of nuance” (G. Brett, “A Radical Leap” in Dawn Ades, Ed., Art in Latin America, New Haven 1989, pp. 270-275).