During the Art Basel fair in 2014 Erika Verzutti caught our attention with her Cemetery with Fringe installation. The Brazilian artist Verzutti is based in Sao Paulo, where she works as a material archeologist from her in-house studio. Verzutti gives a new meaning to the use of color cards by making still life color harmonies. For the creation of Cemetery with Fringe she composed sculptures together within in a blue/grey toned color composition where the pieces seem to be dug up during archeological field research. Interpretations of roman forks and knives are topping off the foreground of the still life whereupon fossil inspired sculptures are presented on floor and pedestals.
 

The amount of color used in Cemetery with Fringe is absolutely stunning and all of the sculptures and stones fall completely within the same coherent philosophy. The different blue tones are combined with grey bricks, charcoal pieces, even metal tones. The hues used by Verzutti even provoke a nostalgic reference to seacoasts, where grounds of stones and ceramic drift ashore the coastline. Verzutti used drawings, which she sealed on stone and cement pedestals to uplift her own fossil sculptures. Her egg shaped parts triggered my imagination to think of which historical creature has laid its eggs a few thousand years ago on the place of the archeological dig.

Verzutti is inspired by the Brazilian horticulture and her sculptures can often be referred to as interpretations of tropical fruits and flowers, inhabiting an ambiguous space between representation and abstraction. Her use of ethnographical studies is combined with her inspiring sense of color and shape and this is what makes her drawings, paintings and sculptures incredibly inspiring and even romantic.

Willem Schenk

www.fortesvilaca.com.br