Dream & Discover
Sand, 2024, by Juliana Cerqueira Leite
2024, Juliana Cerqueira Leite
“My work is driven by an investigation into physicality and how we interact with the physical world,” says the Brazilian artist, Juliana Cerqueira Leite. Leite’s large abstract forms have a compelling tactile quality, with organic curves and contoured surfaces, often vessel-like structures that have contained the artist’s body.
At Frieze Sculpture 2024, three works by Leite are presented by TJ Boulting gallery, drawn from the artist’s series Repetitive Movements that Make and Unmake the World. Each of the three sculptures – titled Shovel, Button and this work, Sand, refer to three repetitive, ordinary actions – digging a hole with a shovel, buttoning trousers, and sanding a wall. Leite translated these movements into drawings, then back into three dimensions, treating stainless steel bars like lines, bending them to mimic and evoke the movement of each action.
In the dynamic, spontaneous curves of Sand, now installed in the English Garden’s of Regent’s Park until 27 October, the viewer can follow the buoyant, vigorous, upward motion, imagining the effort of an arm labouring – a representation of a body, without a body, a reinvention of how we might think about bodies through sculpture, creating an index of human movements.