Green Hallway

Artist Isidro Blasco (Spanish, born 1962)

Date2006

MediumWood, hardware, laminated photographs

DimensionsOverall: 100 x 54 1/4in. (254 x 137.8cm)

ClassificationsSCULPTURE

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number2006.27

On View

Not on view

Collections

Sculpture

Label TextMuseum from Home, October 6, 2020 Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15 Isidro Blasco (Spanish, born 1962), Green Hallway, 2006, wood, hardware, laminated photographs, 100 x 54 ¼ in., Museum purchase, 2006.27 Isidro Blasco is a cosmopolitan figure, having traveled from Spain, his homeland, to such places as Mexico City, Shanghai, and New York City, where he moved in 1996. Blasco creates wondrous assemblages with wood, hardware, and photographs he has taken of city blocks and apartments in which he once lived. He was trained as an architect and may believe that “our existence is defined . . . by the spaces we inhabit,”* but Blasco also understands that memories and perception are not photographic. He underscores the subjective nature of remembering by blatantly showing the construction of his sculptures, like a stage set revealed. The Museum commissioned Blasco to create Green Hallway for the 2006 exhibition, Substance & Light: Ten Sculptors Use Cameras. A hallway is a liminal space—a boundary or threshold between the open street of a city and the interior of an apartment, perhaps one’s own home (representing comfort and safety, we hope). How does Blasco represent such a place? The lighting makes it look somewhat murky, and the strong perspective lines of the photos give the impression that it is long walk to the doors at the other end. It might seem like a non-space, neither here nor there, but an apartment hallway is an important place of transition, where one begins to shift from public to private person. *Euridice Arratia, Curator at the Reina Sofia, in Isidro Blasco: Thinking about That Place, 2004, 47.