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Los Carpinteros Parte de parte (tríptico) (Part of a Part) 2008
© Los Carpinteros
Drawing and watercolor are fundamental to Los Carpinteros’ work. These works on paper, used as a visual aids, serve as a kind of “backup,” or record of current ideas and future plans, but are themselves fine works of art. Despite the collective’s obsession with creating large architectural installations, their drawings have been exhibited by renowned art institutions as examples of utopian or unrealized ideas.
Like a fractal, Parte de parte depicts a fragmented structure in which the part is the whole and the whole is a part. The destruction of a cinder block formed by tiny identical cinder blocks alludes to the crumbling of utopian ideologies in which the idea of the masses and equality among all citizens infringed on the natural condition of an individual to act in accordance with his or her own identity.
Identification
Title
Parte de parte (tríptico) (Part of a Part)
Production Date
2008
Object Number
2017.146a-c
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Copyright
© Los Carpinteros
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2017.146a-c
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Watercolor on paper
Dimensions
Three sheets, each: 78 3/4 x 44 3/4 inches
Visual Description
Parte de parte (tríptico) by Los Carpinteros (Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés and Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez) is a painting from 2008. It is made of three sheets of paper that each measure roughly six and a half feet tall by four feet wide. It is made of watercolor paint on paper.
The painting depicts a grey structure against a white backdrop.
The structure that is depicted appears to be made of cinder grey blocks. The structure appears to be broken or in the process of breaking toward the right-hand side of the composition. Here, the structure separates and creates two distinct sections. In between them, the cinder blocks that once held them together are scattered around the white ground with other blocks in the process of falling toward the ground. Many of the individual cinder blocks are broken. A stark shadow stretches across the width of the composition and indicates that the source of light is coming from the right-hand side of the composition and behind the structure. The shape of the two structures resembles a roman numeral “III” on the left and a roman numeral “I” on the right. In various sections of the composition there are small streaks of black and grey paint that extend from the base of the structures toward the bottom edge of the composition.
