Patrícia Golombek

Patrícia Golombek has a degree in Architecture by Faculdade de Belas Artes de São Paulo, Brazil. She worked with visual art communication, graphic design and architecture. After having graduated, she became interested in art and attended Ernestina Karman’s studio, from 1987 to 1990.

Toying with reality has always been one of the paths that has interested me the most when making art.

Arousing the curiosity to look beyond what is apparent.

The relation of her work to contemporary life strengthens the playful and critical characteristics of the artistic object. The choice of materials is, many times, given by the ambiguity present in them, consequently leading to the questioning of what we judge as being real.

Patricia Golombek is an artist who, for many years now, has been structuring her works and research around this though and on this path.

Fashion, architecture and graphic design are important references in her production. The recurring use of industrialized materials, made into pictorial objects, reveal the artist’s interest in taking out of context what we deem to be normal. Common objects such as thread reels grouped together, leather threads in plastic boxes, as well as different varieties and shapes of cotton, transform themselves into a context far different from the one in our quotidian. Patricia, many times, strengthens her interest through repetition. Her serial attitude is, however, much more associated with the question of transformation from cell to complex structure, trying therefore to call the attention to things which go on unnoticed.

It is this misinterpretation that we can find in the series of cubes created by the artist, where she uses materials such as coconut skin covered in gold leaf, letters made out of plastic and bathed in iron oxide, and rubber placques covered in copper leaf, in order to confirm her statement, “do not believe everything you see.”

Elements taken from designer clothes are eternalized in sculptures made from iron or fabric, with a functionality and scale absolutely modified from the original. This series of works came from the artist’s lack of conformity in seeing that beautiful works from stylists are created for one season, only to be discarded on the next.

In another group of works, the artists uses porcelain plaster covered in gold and silver dust, creating a set of “unattainable preciosities,” exposed in transparent acrylic boxes. Here, the question at hand is different: “why do works of art become so inaccessible?”

Patricia believes that speaking is silver and silence is gold, as she believes that every word that comes out of one’s mouth is eternalized; this becomes visible in her works executed in carrara marble. From this series come forth pieces which join words and miscellaneous materials, blending and mixing them, as well as playing with their meanings.

Patricia has worked over the years with graphical diagramming, and hence some graphical elements, such as numbers and letters, appear frequently in her works of art.

Time and movement are also recurring themes in her latest pieces, executed in panels that circulate through a mechanism that spins them continually, and by doing so questioning the past, the present and the future.