Video: ΝΩΜΩ TEAM
Video –
43:49
ENGLISH,
10.10.2022,
Cycladic art museum,
Athens
Renato Bocchi: “Space Time Architecture according to Chillida”

The keywords describing the oeuvre of Eduardo Chillida — space, matter, time, void, relationships — configure a wonderful mise-en-scène of the fundamental principles of modern physics, examined, too, by a phenomenologist approach, favoured by his close relationship with Martin Heidegger. Chillida stresses the need to look further than the Pillars of Hercules, to go beyond what is known, to dare to disobey established rules and transcend acquired truths. This is a highly modern view, which not only echoes the outlook of contemporary scientific research, but also informs high-profile contemporary approaches to architecture. His main goal as a sculptor was to capture and reveal empty space inside the matter. Just as in the dialectic of Taoist thought, space and time need each other: matter may yield inner space to emptiness, thus giving it shape, while emptiness has an undeniable materiality. Yet, sculptural space is not just a three-dimensional space; it is also a visual, auditory, emotional combination, arising prior to the separation of the senses: the void becomes a “vital”, “existential”, “bodily” entity, carved out of matter. The monumental public art produced by Chillida from the 1970s onwards testifies to his strategic skill in interpreting and projecting spatial relationships, faithfully transferring the vision underpinning his sculptural oeuvre to an architectural scale and dimension. In this way his work engages in a remarkable manner with the components of landscape — light, horizon, sea, sky — or with architectural features of the urban setting, being strongly site-specific and highly “architectural”. In these works he transcends the rigid barriers of Euclidean geometry and the Cartesian spirit, to construct his own geometries and architectures, which are unarguably heterodox and often vindicate the views and methods of much contemporary architecture, sharing its interest in spatial dynamics and topology.

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