Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Sin título [Untitled]

Image caption
CRISTINA IGLESIAS

Sin título [Untitled]

  • 1984
  • Chalk, cement and pigments
  • 64,2 x 39 x 13,5 cm
  • Cat. E_115
  • Acquired in 1996
By:
Isabel Tejeda

One of the fundamental characteristics of Cristina Iglesias’s works is that they draw viewers in, requiring them to play an active role, to enter the works and give free rein to their senses. The piece in the Banco de España collection is medium-sized compared to the rest of Iglesias’s installation work: Untitled (Athens II) (1991) is a wall sculpture made of blue glass planes set in a steel structure that rises slightly from the vertical plane to invite viewers to stand under it to see how the light passes through it and turns the mirror blue. It takes the form of a canopy, and thus changes the conventional position from which works are viewed in exhibition spaces. This exercise is frequently repeated in her work. The sculpture provides shelter for the viewer. Iglesias went on to use alabaster in a similar way in the 1990s.

Similarly, Diptych IV (1998) also creates an enveloping space, in this case via of the reflection in the copper, the light vibrating on it and movement of the viewer. Diptych IV generates virtually different situations that alter the two-dimensional nature of the photography screen printed on copper. Iglesias creates a space using structures built with cardboard boxes on sandy ground that is impracticable not only physically but also mentally, as it changes as viewers pass through it.

Finally, the collection also has a more sculptural piece from the early part of the artist’s career: Untitled, a stone stele from 1984 that seem to have the relief of a wing drawn in cement. Cristina Iglesias explores the contrast of textures and colours of cement (in this case polychrome), a material used since Roman times due to its architectural flexibility. This work seems to conceal hints of the geological or paleontological.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Cristina Iglesias
San Sebastian 1956

Cristina Iglesias started studying Chemistry but then switched to drawing and ceramics before focusing on sculpture in 1980 and 1982 at the Chelsea School of Arts in London. She then developed a new concept of sculpture that includes context and space as part of the work. In 1988, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the USA.

Her work experiments with a plethora of materials including metals such as copper and steel, alabaster, resin, crystal, esparto grass, concrete and water. She also uses engraving as a for  of expression, and everything necessary to create new spaces with natural echoes that hide and insinuate more than they show. The experience of the viewer is the cornerstone of her work. Space is therefore dramatised by an exercise in light and shadow that draws on the penetrable, architectural forms in her pieces. For example, mazes of structures appear frequently in her works: they enable viewers to relate to works in a different way each time they enter them, as if becoming entangled in a wood. “My pieces are only finished once they are installed and each exhibition creates specific resources and is sensitive to a certain space”, she explains.

Cristina Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Bienniale in 1986 and 1993, won the National Award for Plastic Arts in 1999 and the Grand Prix for Best Living Artist at Arco 2009. In 2012 she was awarded the Berliner Kunstpreis.

During her artistic career, Iglesias has exhibited at the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery (Seville, 1984); the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France, 1987); the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1988, 1993, 1997, 2005, 2012 and 2013); Malaga Fine Arts Museum (1988); the Art Gallery of York University (Toronto, Canada, 1992); the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1997); the Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2003); the Marian Goodman Gallery (New York, 2005 and 2011); the Casa de la Moneda (Madrid, 2015); and the Centro Botín (Santander, 2018), among other venues.

Her most important permanent public works are those at the gates and entrance of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Three Waters in Toledo, Forgotten Streams in the City of London, Deep Fountain in Leopold de Waelplaats square in Antwerp and From the Underground in the Renzo Piano building at the Centro Botín.

Isabel Tejeda

 
«Contemporary Art from Spain», European Central Bank (Frankfurt, 2001-2002). «(UN)COMMON VALUES. Two Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art», National Bank of Belgium (Brussels, 2022).
Miguel Ángel Hidalgo García La escultura de Cristina Iglesias. Dar cuerpo a lo imaginario, Murcia, Universidad de Murcia, 2008. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.