Sandra Cinto’s “In Silence” in Matadero Madrid

Matadero Madrid is going to open – Friday 13, 19 h. – “In Silence”, a site specific installation developed by Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto for Matadero Madrid’s Gran Escala program. It’s a program that suggests a group of artists to take an industrial and huge space, which Sandra Cinto has turned into an imaginary, intimate and categorical scenery, although it might be structured out of the fragile. On the one hand, it vindicates the silence of a society that has been invaded by noise, and, on the other hand, that attempt, silenced, individual, becomes expanded, categorical and collective. The experience is physical, but is especially psychical, mental. The enormous space in Matadero now becomes a room ruled by a table, the place where creation begins, where projects and people find shelter and support. Lit with a light bulb, the wooden table features musical instruments on its legs and represents an immaculate score, although there are lots of sheets of paper, notebooks and notes. The artist draws on the scores, which get crumpled and piled up, just like if the artist were trying to compose a harmony and ended up making a huge paper mountain. Right aside, there is a stringless contrabass, serene, mute, drawn, sensual. When entering the room, we realize that it’s the representation of a study or workspace, intimate and closed, although it seems to be unlimited, boundless. The delicacy of the drawing, that silenced and impossible musicality, contrasts with categoricalness of the place and the mountain of crumpled papers, unbounded. Sandra Cinto stages a feeling, the one related to the difficulty to create, compose, express. Therefore, silence is here a sort of precipice, suspension. In Silence makes time stop just like when we are in front of an old picture, when music doesn’t sound, creation is a dead end, when a ladder leads to nowhere or when the books cannot be opened. Silence is desire here, but it especially stands as a memory that became accentuated by an intense light that represents a metaphor of knowledge, fragile and intense. Sandra Cinto. Sandra Cinto was born in Santo André (Brazil) in 1968 and presently lives and works in São Paulo, where she co-directs the artist space-workshop named Ateliê Fidalga. Besides the usual shows in the galleries that represent her, like Casa Triângulo in São Paulo and Tanya Bonakdar in New York, she has carried out solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, Seattle Art Museum, Tomie Ohtake Institute or the Atlantic Center of Modern Art in Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as several collective shows. Her work is showcased as part of such collections as those held by ARCO Foundation, Galician Contemporary Art Center, Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, Contemporary Art Center in Inhotim or The Philips Collection.