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Mudam Luxembourg presents The Mudam Collection and The Pinault Collection in Dialogue with a major installation by Cabrita (b. 1956, Lisbon) from the Mudam Collection and a suspended sculpture by Cerith Wyn Evans (b. 1958, Llanelli) from the Pinault Collection. This display is the second part of a collaboration with the Pinault Collection, following the presentation of sculptural works by Danh Vo in 2019. This new conversation takes light as its subject and as material, a prominent feature of the work of both artists.
The fluorescent tube is a recurrent element in Cabrita’s assembled sculptures which he considers as three-dimensional paintings. Cabrita employs found materials that appear to bear traces of their places of origin. À propos des lieux d’origine #1 (About Places of Origin #1), (2005), is composed of raw building materials – steel and bricks – painted in vibrant orange, and neon lights connected by winding cables. The installation, whose open and closed rectilinear configuration approximates the walls of its original site, inscribes itself in space according to different configurations. The evocative nature of the installation and the heterogenous nature of its materials embeds itself brazenly within the sleek lines of the museum’s architecture. Within this context, the cold white light of the fluorescent tubes becomes equivalent to matter, drawing lines in space.
Wyn Evans’ art is characterised by a concern with the idea of polyphony and the mechanisms of language, both verbal and non‐verbal. We are in Yucatan and every unpredicted thing from 2012/2014, is, through the poetic allusion of its title, an invitation to another place. The work links a coastal state of Mexico with the refinement of Italian craftsmanship. The sculpture takes the form of a delicately crafted chandelier produced by the Galliano Ferro glass workshop in Murano. Its light intensity varies subtly according to the rhythm of a soundscape composed by Wyn Evans and featuring the sounds of machines and birds chirping. A discreet, pulsating flicker describes a rhythm from the arrangement of recorded sound. These esoteric signals alters our perceptual field, and – as with Cabrita’s installation – the space from which they emanate.