Fernanda Fragateiro’s "Stones against Diamonds" for NC-arte

The work of Fernanda Fragateiro (Montijo, Portugal, 1962) is characterized by a marked interest in re-thinking modernist practices in art and architecture, which she later uses as raw material for her own works. Based on an extensive research and using a wide range of materials, Fragateiro’s sculptures, installations and in situ interventions feature an emblematic, powerful and attractive style that is born out of a meticulous and minimalist aesthetic in terms of shape, color and texture of surfaces. 

The title of this show —Stones Against Diamonds, which can be viewed at NC-arte through September 29— is a phrase taken from an essay that was written by Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, and refers to the hazardous mix of semiprecious stones and rough and common materials that took place during the construction of a road in Brazil; for Fragateiro, this impressive image becomes a metaphor to the complex and sometimes conflictive amalgam that is Modernism, especially in the Latin American context.

Stones Against Diamonds takes as starting point the live and work of the extraordinary couple of artists Anni and Josef Albers and their fertile relation with the Latin American culture. They were born German and met at the Bauhaus where Josef was a professor and Anni a student. Running away from the Nazis in the 1930 decade, they moved to the United States, where they became famous –Josef as a painter, theoretician and educator, and Anni as a textile designer–. They traveled throughout Latin America, since they shared a fervent interest in pre-Columbian art and the couple studied, collected and promoted it; so it later influenced their own abstract geometric work, which became a concept for boldface names during the 1950 and 60 decades, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt.

Because of its historic precedents, as well as the profound aesthetic affinity, the work of Anni and Josef Albers represents an important opportunity for the artist to take a closer look at the intersection lines of art and history that defined and determined Modernism both in Europe and Latin America, and presently question the power based on gender, institutions and politics. But at the same time, in spite of this reviewing and criticizing process, Fragateiro creates a new work with a distinctly contemporary making.

 George Stolz, July 2014

NC-arte Gallery
Carrera 5 No. 26B – 76
Bogotá, Colombia

Source: NC-arte Gallery (Fragment of the Catalogue words)