Francesco Perrotta-Bosch
In the most unlikely objects, Lucia Koch finds (and reaffirms) the argument for architecture’s authority.
These “unlikely objects” are, quite literally, rubbish. And they will continue to be, even if one wanted to camouflage them under the elegant adjectives of art criticism. The raw materials for Koch’s photographs have fulfilled their original purpose – as containers for some commodity. Once the contents have been consumed, the fate of each package seems certain. This is especially true for objects produced in the mediocrity of the 21st century, in which the delicacy of things is constantly mistaken as debility. These days, every item is disposable. Every artifact is breakable. Everything is at risk of fading with the inevitable entropy of time.
Within the supreme banality of these boxes, Lucia Koch reveals an unexpected architectural spatiality. Small spaces provide snapshots of interior environments that appear to be expansive, solemn and beautiful. How can something so insignificant provide us with such a striking image? The work is something of an enigma. It’s illusive. It’s fanciful.
There was a time when the empirical and the scientific worlds were in favor of creating ingenious mechanisms that contradicted the limits of what was possible: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) imagined Flying Machines, Agostino Ramelli (1531– 1608) outlined a Reading Machine and a Musical Organ with Flowers and Birds and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) envisioned a Machine of Metamorphosis. In such cases, technique was not subservient to rationalism and in turn, the door was opened for healthy associations with fascination and illusion.
Lucia Koch is an artist with a Renaissance mentality due to her ability to move easily between different fields of knowledge. The illusions created by Koch stem from the appropriation of a method created six centuries ago by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446).
The Florentine conceived geometric construction capable of representing three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional planes: that which allows the inside of the Lasagna packaging to become a visual representation with a single vanishing point perspective, which centralizes and organizes the entire visual field, following a rigorous and universal metric. In turn, everything inside the Sans Gluten box follows optical and mathematical coding, in which the object reveals itself by growing or shrinking in size depending on one’s distance to it.
We could consider this visual verisimilitude as a discovery by Brunelleschi, but it is the invention of a cultural model. After all, there is no single correct way to provide a graphic record analogous to the way we see the world. As a matter of fact, the single vanishing point perspective contains a high degree of abstraction by assuming a fixed point of view and disregarding natural parameters such as the convexity of the human eyeball. However, a comfortable six hundred years with this optical paradigm allows us to see Lucia Koch’s photograph of the interior of the Arroz Jasmim packaging as a portrait clicked into the ideal position – showing to us, the perfection possible within that space.
Another Brunelleschian principle is the constant search for harmony through the use of simple geometric shapes, as seen with the inside of Spaghetti Iená. Other principles include modulation, as with the box storing small bottles of Kombucha, symmetry as seen with Silver and repetitiveness, the very essence of mathematical relationships, that is demonstrated throughout this exhibition as a whole. Here, mathematics is the intermediary between art, technique and theory.
By sustaining the freedom of artistic creation with the foundations of a geometric and mathematical system, Brunelleschi allowed us to have full graphic control of any space in the world. With such norms for the formulation of images, the Florentine offered us the foundation of the modern conception of architecture. Since then, architects have been able to precisely predict what a three-dimensional object would look like, in order to prove the physical validity needed to execute the idea. A small drawing would be able to represent something as grand as the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence, even before it was built. Here is the invention of the project. This is architecture’s authority.
Lucia Koch encounters (and reaffirms) this argument of authority when she offers us a return to the basic principles of the discipline.
In the two-dimensionality of the photos, the artist makes use of these instruments of spatial representation, but with an inversion: Koch presents something as small as a bag of groceries in a size larger than that of the human body. Therefore, it is not the conversion of a mental idea into a building, as the draftsman would do, but rather it is the conversion of the banal object into Architecture.
In the three-dimensional space of the gallery, Koch expands the internal environments with her works. Spaghetti Iená extends the back corridor: the line where the floor meets the wall aligns with the line where the planes of the packaging meet; both coinciding towards the vanishing point. That is, with the image of the package of pasta, the narrow environment was expanded and its perspective improved. As with Paolo Veronese’s elusive frescoes on the interior walls of Andrea Palladio’s Villa Barbaro, Lucia Koch’s photographs constitute portals to a non-immanent space. The physical limits of the space are challenged by the artist: when we enter through the door on Rua Redentor, Sans Gluten and Kombucha allow us to see beyond the borders of that allotment in Ipanema. A small house that radiates in the alternation between both built and projected architecture.
2025
Published for the exhibition Córte, at Nara Roesler Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil