Sculpture as Threshold. Transits and Evanescences: Echoes of Matter / Spatiality and Experience / Temporal Dynamics / Corporeality and Presence

Abstract

Art is a child of its time and artistic creation reflects on current problems, although it looks towards a future that is always uncertain and unknown. Artists enquire about being and about the world, and our thoughts are materialised through different forms, materials, techniques, processes and ways. However, these should never be understood as ends in themselves, but rather as ways of conveying and embodying Thought and Commitment. Our article will focus on the field of contemporary sculpture and more specifically we will point out those materials that question the permanence of works of art; a notion that is consolidated with conceptual art, defining the primordiality of the idea over its realisation. For this study we have selected and analysed works that work with energy as opposed to matter and others that prioritise the temporal dimension over the spatial, as well as certain projects that deal conceptually with corporeality, the experiential and the existential. Our world is liquid, flowing, unstable... changing. For this reason, we will try to show how the concepts of evanescence and dissolution implied in today’s sculpture  embrace this permeable nature associated with our times.