drawing transfers
Can Lis - Jørn Utzon House
Mallorca island, Spain
“The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress” Goethe
Surfaces and textures. A series of drawing transfers that examine the significance of touching materials as a bodily experience. Traces from haptic surfaces used as a poetic language that have transmitted the pass of time and wise deterioration caused from the exposure to the ocean environment. Rain, salty wind or sunlight; temperature and climate; natural factors that give the house a sensitive materiality.
The drawings pay homage to the dialogue between time, matter and the Mediterranean landscape of Mallorca. Drawing as an experience that unveils diverse tactile qualities -carving patterns, cavities, impurities, corrosion or the direct traces of production that celebrate the marks left from the manufacture tools process.
A series of drawings as textural transcriptions where hands and observation explore the tectonics expressed through diverse states. Smooth, rough, soft, sharp, cold, warm. The materials express several manifestations and every single one is different. The warm, porous and rough surfaces of the Marès sandstone, used for exterior walls and pillars; Santanyi limestone on the beige color range; slightly porous and denser for flooring; or the warm-gray, cool-silver gray and reddish colors with perceptible year rings from Madera Norte, a Majorcan pinewood used for woodwork.
Can Lis house describes an expressive potential of materials interpreting the varied coastal landscapes of Mallorca and vernacular details and building solutions that can be found in the local culture, in the stables and farmhouses spread throughout country side in the island.
The drawing series have been made with several media, such as graphite and charcoal from a burned pine tree found in the surroundings of the house.
Project made with the support of Utzon Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Architecture.
