In 1994, Rui Toscano (b. 1970, Lisbon) produced a sound sculpture that was to prove decisive for the development of his artistic practice over the following years. Bricks are Heavy (as it was called) marked the beginning of a long line of works in which the artist simultaneously uses the radio cassette player as a sculptural element and as a sound amplification system.
The reference to rock culture, and thus to a certain youth culture that the artist shared in, was unmistakably present in the first two works that he made of this kind: Bricks are Heavy and (They Say We’re Generation X But I Say We’re Generation Fuck You!), which dates from 1995. Yet what has endured in all of his sound sculptures—something that few people actually noted in the 1990s—is the remarkable reactivation and subversion of the characteristic formal language of minimalist sculpture. Rui Toscano creates frameworks for experience and meaning based on the crossover between simple, minimal forms and sound events through which reality and representation are able to burst forth. Frequently allied to this discursive aspect is the exploration of a self-referential dimension of the work of art.
By the mid-1990s, the radio cassette player was already an obsolete object that was gradually beginning to disappear: although this fact made the process increasingly difficult, it did not prevent the development of this body of works, as is proved by two new sound sculptures, one of which was first planned ten years ago.
Rui Toscano: Sound Sculptures 1994–2013 is curated by Miguel Wandschneider.
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