Drawing to Build

I The question · 2015

“The drawing starts from the method of construction: an answer to how it is going to be built.”

Rialengo No.3 and, five years later, Rialengo No.4 are each made of hundreds of pieces, screwed one to the next. The first was laser-cut in 1.2 mm oak; the second, CNC-cut in 10 mm MDF and finished in automotive paint. The process is the same, and so is the question: how do you draw the cutting plan of every piece, so that a laser or a CNC can cut it?

II The reading

“Once the problem is set, several problems appear: aesthetic, of conception, conceptual and of fabrication.”

That each layer would be drawn on its own was already settled. The aesthetic problem was how to move smoothly between formal accidents: the accidents give the sculpture its expression; the fluency of the transitions gives it its sensitivity and its attention to detail.

There was a second aim: to show all the material that is thrown away when a sculpture is carved from a block of wood. I drew the positive, and the negative came from enclosing the void within a limit: a box which, split lengthwise into three, uncovers the core. That formalised void measures the material that traditional carving discards.

III Tried and ruled out

“All of us have mannerisms, and they show in an artist's work.”

A 3D model would have solved the form, and I knew what it would return. Throughout history artists have fought their own mannerisms, painters drawing with the left hand among them; I did not want mine in the piece.

Drawing only the positive is a mannerism too, deeper and more abstract: we find it hard to draw the negative, and we always need the positive to discover it.

IV The decision

“It is a method I created.”

So I set myself a rule: work with only two figures at a time. I drew the first figure freely, and the second without looking at the first: beginning and end, both arbitrary. Between them I drew a third, just as free, certain that two figures always join: one joins two, two joins three, so one joins three. Then I hid one and drew between the other two, and so on, always two figures and the one born between them, until the drawing was complete.

The dense part of the drawing holds 800 figures; one in every two was cut, 400 layers. A sparser part behind it was never built.

There was one more aim: not to have the sculpture in mind, but to see it for the first time when the last layer was in place. The artist as the observer of his own work.

V Shown twice · 2015–2016

The work was shown in two formats: the sculpture, in All Inclusive during Berlin Art Week 2015, and the drawing, printed in fifteen sections, at Art Vilnius '16.

VI After · 2020

“Once the scale is defined and the material chosen, the number of figures needed to build it is determined.”

I had begun the drawing without a specific scale. In 2020 the same method became Rialengo No.4, a sculpture for the front of a jewellery shop and my first major commission as a sculptor in the Dominican Republic: 480 CNC-cut profiles of 10 mm MDF, 240 for each half. To keep the detail of a 1.2 mm layer with a 10 mm layer, the piece had to grow almost as much as the layer thickened: about eight times.

Drawn at 4.8 m, it was built at 5 m, +4 %: screwing, gluing and the minimum gap between layers add length, and the design allows for it.