Orla by Isabel Carvalho

In her 2011 project Orla, Isabel Carvalho thinks about water, in its states and shapes, and as a metaphor of fluidity and solidity, of limit and infinity, giving privilege to the sense of audition. She plays with the idea of glass as water-made-permanent and researches Portugal’s glass-blowing traditions and techniques.

In a broad sense, the artist reflects about decorating as an attitude of searching for a preferential individual order and as an exercise of self-discipline, in the deconstruction and cluttering of definite places and in the attempt to reconstruct and rearrange those very same – spatial and discursive – places. The show is composed by a set of objects made in the glass industries that still exist in the Portuguese region of Marinha Grande and by a publication with drawings, suggested by the reading of texts characterized by a fluidity of language. Among them, “The temptation of Quiet Veronica”, by Robert Musil, was one of the most relevant. The title of the exhibition refers to the geographical coastal location, but it also suggests a way of designating the present. As Isabel defines it, Orla is “a place of encounter and confrontation; a dynamic and intense line, with constant shakings; where there are disputations for the territory; cutting and configuration in a permanent updating of its limits; where a diversity of promising alternatives can be found; it is, in a close perspective, a mobile textured mesh…”

Apart from the research, the project resulted in a long series of watercolor studies that recall wave breaking patterns at the shore. She asked us, Carvalho Bernau [not related], to help her turn it into an artist book:

A foil-stamped slipcase protects a the fragile, cover-less book on thin 70gsm uncoated paper.

We proposed to give a subtle layer to Isabel’s black and white watercolors. The ink color was mixed directly on the offset press, and varied per printing sheet, starting from a lighter tint of blue/purple and developing to a dark deep tint of greyish/blue – a comment on the variations and reflexions of tinted glass.

François Rappo’s Genath – quite new then – seemed to have a fitting tone of voice: It is rugged like a wooden mould and carries forward its source and origins of some amateurish but intriguing typefaces.* Yet at the same time Rappo’s perfect interpretation and drawing style transform this source into something truly new and render it elegant and sharp as glass. This is the hallmark of a great reinterpretation of a historic typeface – to find something intriguing in a source of questionable quality, and work to extract its essence.

* The source is an amalgam of typefaces on a 1720 Johann Rudolf Genath type specimen, of a the lineage that would later become the Haas type foundry. Indeed, Rappo speculates that the typefaces are early work of J.W. Haas. A facsimile can be found, if you are lucky, as a loose insert to Brucker, Anton: Schweizer Stempelschneider und Schriftgießer. Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co Verlag, 1943.