Sculptures in public spaces

Contrapunto 2011

Fountain group sculpture in the recreation area Fonte Gaitera, Catoira

 

Artist: Xaquín Chaves

Architect: Ildefonso Estévez

Promotor: City Council Catoira

 

Rosa do Mar 2008

A Sculpture for the new sea wall at Ferrazo, in Vilagarcía de Arousa

 

Artist: Xaquín Chaves

Promoter: Port authority of Vilagarcía de Arousa, Spain

 

Background 

At the drawing board stage for this sculpture project on the Vilagarcía dock, I had a clear idea about how to tackle it, from a "conceptual duality" point of view, a duality set by the features of where it was to be located - the end of the new sea wall at Ferrazo - an enclave with a port orientated setting, in such a natural environment as the Ria of Arousa. The challenge, then, was to compose a volume on the horizon which, as a part of the landscape, would provide a unifying, harmonizing dynamic to all the elements present. 

 

Characteristics 

This is how the RosadoMar arose, with an ideology in the construction, sculpting and chromatic nuances intended to set up an aesthetic dialogue amid cranes and islets, rocks and industrial premises, hill lands and the sea. A piece in which clear cut forms and the vividness of indigo have priority, designed to be the identifying, emblematic element in the new port. On that basis, and as always happens in artistic creation, the Apollonian and the Bacchanalian rival for who will manage to impose and impress their final seal on the work, showing their forms, balances and imbalances, asymmetries, gaps, tension, points and counterpoints that set and give body to the RosadoMar which, using its artistic language, set out to be a "blue seafaring metaphor" that, in a way, gives a welcome and a farewell to this port in Arousa. 

 

Features 

The RosadoMar is a sculpture made up of eight elements: six of these are to be made in concrete in a „win-row" or half moon shape, and two of the others in steel, in a "stave or arch shape. They will be manufactured separately to be later "twinned" together and anchored to a purpose-built platform. This platform is to incorporate a stair, ramp and a plant area of cliff rose. The work will rise up twelve meters from a maximum diameter of five, describing an oval-shaped volume, slightly angled although barely visible but certainly physically there, in allusion to the Greek concept of "enthesis , its upper part incorporating a light beacon indicating the entrance to the Port, thus making it functional. 

The entire RosadoMar is pigmented in a single indigo color to enhance the formal rigueur and visual polyvalence of light and shade. Finally, night lighting will be incorporated focusing on the lower third of the height of the piece so that, by night, we can see a sculpture where it arises from base of the sea wall, so that the beacon appears to be hanging from the sky. 

 

Personal considerations 

The RosadoMar is to be installed in a place that has a particular meaning for me, a place linked with my own visual biography and which I consider to be exceptionally attractive, with Corlegada, Malveiras, 0 Con, As Brinas, Vilaboa and Ferrazo, all framed within another line traced by the Barbanza hill lands. A natural, human landscape, perfectly defined and imbued with a special lighting. 

This is the circumstance that determines how to deal with the creative, personal challenge posed by the RosadoMar. A sculpture forged with the sentiment and ambition of those who set out on a journey. A journey as an offering to the sea and its folk since this intervention is to be an emblematic, harmonizing element on the new skyline in the Arousa inlet, a bridge between the port facilities and a natural landscape. A farewell and a welcome, tinged with the color of the sea.

 

 

MOSAICO MURAL 1994

 

Wall mosaic in Rúa da Baldosa Vilagarcía de Arousa

 

Artist: Xaquín Chaves

Promoter: City council VILAGARCÍA DE AROUSA.

 

PINTURAS MURALES 1982

Wall painting at Plaza de Abastos in Vilanova de Arousa (disappeared)

 

Artists: Lino Silva and Xaquín Chaves (painter), Francisco Leiro and Monolo Paz (sculptors)

Architect: Xosé Pérez Franco

Promoter: City council Vilanova de Arousa