Secreta soberania

(Secret Sovereignty, until our sweet reunion arrives)

Conceived from the outset in close dialogue with the other sculpture, Secret Sovereignty (when I see you, the world around us ceases, for a moment, to exist), both works were created in 2000 for the Botanical Garden of the University of Porto, on the occasion of the exhibition A Experiência do Lugar.

On a monumental scale, the two works explore one of the central themes of Chafes’s artistic practice: the contrast between the actual weight of iron and the sense of lightness suggested by the form. Rising vertically, the structure seems to trace in space a kind of essential, unstable architecture. Rui Chafes’s distinctive visual language resists easy classification, yet it displays a remarkable continuity, particularly in its choice of materials, with the almost exclusive use of iron and steel. His metal sculptures are not cast; rather, they are made by bending sheets of metal, a process that allows the viewer to perceive something of the constructive method underlying them. This differs from stone sculpture, in which form is achieved by “subtracting” material. The title — “until our sweet reunion comes” — introduces a temporal and emotional dimension, transforming the sculpture into a figure of waiting, distance, and the longing for an encounter capable, for a moment, of suspending the world around us.