Los Carpinteros Sala de lectura octagonal (prototipo) (Octagonal Reading Room (Prototype)) 2013
© Los Carpinteros
The Los Carpinteros collective emerged in 1992, while its members were students at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Most of its works are born out of an attraction to the narrow boundaries between art and life, and they almost always explore fusions of art, architecture, design, drawing, sculpture, and performance. Though the duo’s work has always been linked to the Cuban context, it is by no means limited in its scope, as their pieces generate reflections of a global order. Los Carpinteros graft a range of ideologies and political positions onto objects and their functionality, in a constant search for new forms through which to convey their ideas.
Sala de lectura octagonal is a prototype for a larger installation whose circular structure alludes to the “panopticon” penitentiary designed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century and implemented by the Cuban government in the Presidio Modelo (Model Prison) in the 1920s. Los Carpinteros have modified the original function of the structure in order to offer the reader a free view of and access to books.
Identification
Title
Sala de lectura octagonal (prototipo) (Octagonal Reading Room (Prototype))
Production Date
2013
Object Number
2017.147
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Copyright
© Los Carpinteros
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2017.147
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Cor-Ten steel
Dimensions
16 x 37 x 37 inches
Visual Description
Sala de lectura octagonal (prototipo) [Octagonal Reading Room (Prototype)] by Los Carpinteros (Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés and Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez) is a sculpture from 2013. It measures sixteen inches by thirty-seven inches by thirty-seven inches. It is made of Cor-Ten steel also known as weathering steel, a type of material that eliminates the need for painting by developing a rust-like appearance.
The piece is a prototype for a reading room. Its basic shape is octagonal and is made of six levels of weathering steel. Starting from the top, the top of the sculpture is a circular dome with a smaller opening at the center. The following four levels are octagons that get progressively larger. They are all horizontally flat with intersecting beams that create a grid-like pattern that goes five spaces across each side of the entire sculpture. The fourth and largest octagon then repeats five times toward the ground and becomes the eight walls that complete the structure. There is a rectangular opening on one side. The entire sculpture has a blue-grey color with specs of brown and orange rust throughout.
