“The original staircase was the first impact, after entering the building. It was not a grand staircase but it had a special light that flowed through different nuances of grey. The new staircase explores this idea of a module or geometric form that goes on repeating and deforming, rotating and altering its shape and position.”

An art object can be isolated or in context.
It depends on the way it was meant to be perceived. Paintings are often to be interpreted for what they contain, independently from where they hang. That is not always the case with art as an integral part of its surroundings. Maybe it is a question of scale or weight. Can a staircase or an entrance be a sculptured form of art?
Jose Pedro Croft’s artistic intervention at Ivens Arte is. By replacing an existing element with another, one can almost miss the intervention, but its aesthetic quality stands out and something changes in our eyes, imperceptible, through the light, in a very subtle way. In the staircase, the location, the scale, the movement, were all preserved, but the artist’s irreverence takes its place and reveals itself. Ornaments are now replaced by geometry and the challenge is one of extreme exigency.

The effect is larger than expected and the minimal approach fills the room with beauty and elegance. This is perhaps the essence of this work: irreverence and simplicity.