Photo: Leo Faria
On the eve of the opening of Cold Parts — The Design, individual of Iran do Espírito Santo inaugurated on June 30th in Forts D'Aloia & Gabriel, the artist spoke with Lucia KochThe exhibition brings together drawings and sculptures produced between 2007 and 2025, among them the “Compass” (2025), a sculpture the height of a human body, and “Untitled (Fence)” (2007–2026), wall drawing presented for the first time in Brazil after having premiered in Venice Biennale in 2007.
The conversation explores themes that have underpinned Iran's work for decades: the tension between precision and failure, the duality between the functional object and its geometric form, and what happens when a drawing instrument—compass, ruler, template—becomes a work of art itself. Koch conducts the interview as an artist who shares vocabulary and concerns with the interviewee; read on.
Lucia KochMost of the questions stem from our previous conversations. You mentioned that the height of the Compass (2025) is 1,80m, which is the height of a man, in quotes, a kind of Modulor. Would it be an update of Le Corbusier's Modulor or Leonardo's Vitruvian Man? Because to me this relationship seems more ironic than affirmative…
Iran do Espírito SantoIt's more ironic. I didn't think of the Modulor, I thought of the Vitruvian Man. I had read a book about it a while ago, which is a very strong reference in the history of art and architecture. But this reference wasn't something so planned. One day I was working with the compass and I had the idea of enlarging it to human scale, because of this anthropomorphic relationship it has. Almost everyone who has ever worked with a compass at some point has played with this. Its arms look like two legs.
LKOr two arms opening.
IESI think more about legs; there's even a type of compass called a "ballerina compass" for making tighter circles.
LKThe Vitruvian Man is a drawing made with a compass. It's a tool used in drawing. The movement of these rods is somewhat like that of the arms and legs of the Vitruvian Man.
IESI have been making these sculptures for a long time, which are very accurate and technical representations of specific objects. And I started to introduce a certain functionality, the lamp that fits perfectly into a socket, for example; or the Nut and Thread (2015), which is built exactly like an idealized nut and thread, without any manufacturing defects.
LKThe first time you spoke about the Compass, and showed me a picture, I was struck by your saying: “It’s identical to a compass.” That “identical” gives me an idea of precision, which made me think of the countless precision instruments you’ve created, and the fact that you draw in order to draw. You draw an instrument in order to then use it to draw.
IESYes. In the case of Compasso, it is much more complex due to the number of pieces, which resulted in a very high level of difficulty in execution.
LKYou have a recurring idea of reproducing an object identical to another recognizable, familiar one, which you experience in lamps, shoeboxes, in countless works. This happens in Compasso, but it seems a little different to me, because it's not just any object; the compass and the meter are drawing instruments. In tracing, in measuring, in every way they are instruments of precision. In this aspect, I was also thinking about Untitled (Alambrado) (2007–2026), where the hand drawing is guided by a tool, a ruler you made yourself…
IESIt's a template, a ruler-template.
LKYes, a template ruler, completely defined by you, that you draw and have cut. This supposedly confers a certain objectivity to the drawing, as if it could be replicated by anyone ad infinitum. And a template, in principle, would exclude any inconsistency or accident, any possibility of something else happening…
IESTheoretically…
LKBut it doesn't matter if there was a ruler; you can see that there's someone there who drew that. It's only a reality before us because someone drew it. So it's not entirely free of subjectivity. But there are other works where you use a ruler, sometimes made by you, sometimes not, like for example the series of curtain drawings, where you use a pen that wears down as you draw. And this scarcity of ink produces an idea of a pen that's failing, there's a kind of recurrence of a failure there. This rhythm, which creates a certain cadence, is what produces an undulation in the plane. And it's only because of that that you can produce the idea of a curtain. But then you create a precision instrument to also make use of the imprecision it provides. You could try to maintain constancy, regularity, but it's impossible. So, each stroke is unique and the resulting image is always different.
IESI've been obsessed with this for a long time, since my youth, with the relationship between repetition and particularity.
LKAnd that's the difference, isn't it? Because repetition is what creates space for the difference to appear more clearly.
IESYes, it's an entanglement, even with identity itself. Identity in a broader sense, of things themselves.
LKYes, but I think it has to do with subjectivity.
IES: Going back to the point you raised, about the compass being an instrument for drawing and measuring, I had already made a sculpture of a pencil about 20 years ago, called Silver Pencil (2010), and it's based on a real pencil, with its proper proportions; it's a hexagonal prism. This shape, incidentally, is repeated in several works. The pencil specifically has this characteristic of being a prism that intersects with a cone, which is what defines its shape and identity—these are the geometric qualities in objects that often go unnoticed.
LKYou take an object that has a function, that is utilitarian, and you make its essence its form, while the function is a kind of poetic dimension. That is, recognizing a pencil in it is what has a kind of poetry and carries the concept of the work. But the essence of the object is translated into the form. It seems like there's an inversion there.
IESYes, I find what you pointed out interesting. But there's something else that's also important to me, which is the relationship and duality between concrete reality, which includes functionality, our mundane existence, this daily struggle with reality in doing things, and the abstraction that is implicit in everything, especially in everything created by humanity.
LKPerhaps that's why you resort to essences, to that which reappears in different spheres. In the Compass, for example, the scale of the body and of architecture coincide. It has the scale of a body, but it seems to refer more to architecture than to the scale of a drawing understood as a project. It is more of the "real" world, of built architecture. And on that scale, when we find it leaning against the wall, it's as if it were there waiting for an action. At rest, but ready for use. On the other hand, it seems like the very subject who draws, as if even when still, it had a certain anima. It's as if the possibility of drawing were already inscribed in it; it's almost a creature there: closer to the hand and head that draw than to an instrument to be used by the hand.
IESI had never thought about it, but in that sense we can also draw a parallel with the subject itself, with us who draw, who are also an instrument.
LKIf we shift the compass's position, we shift our own as well. I also wanted to think a little with you about this ruler you made and designed to create the wire fence pattern. Sometimes it seems that what justifies the choice of using a ruler is that with it you create the possibility of reproducing a pattern in another context or moment, in another place. So, are the places and contexts what summon the works when they reappear? The Wire Fence first appeared in your exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2007. That's almost 20 years. So, is the Wire Fence in Venice the same Wire Fence in São Paulo?
IESIt's almost the same thing, because I used exactly the same template I used in Venice. The current design has almost the same proportions, but it's a little smaller because I wanted it to fit on a specific wall in the new gallery space, which is lower and has the peculiarity of taking up almost an entire wall, a wall that's, let's say, self-supporting. I've done this work three times before. The first time was at the Venice Biennale, then I did it in the United States, and in Calgary [Canada], in an exhibition of only drawings and wall paintings. I had never shown it here in Brazil. I'm at a point in my life, at my age, where I'm reviewing things. What triggered this most recently was my last exhibition in Italy, at the Mazzoleni Gallery, where I decided to do a mini-retrospective. Also as a reaction to counter the demand for novelty, I'm quite tired of it.
LKIt's somewhat driven by market logic to always have a new body of work that begins, ends, and is shown in sequence. But although you say that this has to do with your current life stage and feeling a bit fed up with it, you've always done sets that weren't necessarily the showing of a single series with a beginning, middle, and end.
IESYes, that's true. Not in museums, but in galleries there's always a need to show new things. And there comes a point in life when that becomes meaningless.
LKYes, but at the same time I keep thinking that retrospective exhibitions, which are more common in institutions than in galleries, have another aspect that suggests a kind of…
IES: Evolution.
LKYes, and it's precisely not about evolution. You don't reason like someone who starts, finishes, and presents closed series. I was also thinking that you return to things you've already thought about and done, because they don't exhaust themselves in one work; they come back into the field, not as an old work, a reference, a root—it doesn't seem prior to those others you're showing.
When you do Line and Shadow 4 (2013-2026), the nature of the line and the shadow of the line are the same, it's as if you were saying, "they are the same, it's all virtual, it's all thought."
IESThat's when I started to realize that I incorporate, in a way, what people tell me about the work, what they perceive. And I made this painting with the intention of referring to a space beyond, which doesn't exist, but I didn't imagine it was illusory.
LKIn many of your works, you give us two seemingly identical things, and in what they are not identical, we are forced to think. It seems that you are repeating, which wouldn't be exactly new in the field of conceptual art, the reiteration, the tautology. But then you dismantle that quick understanding a little. When you see the Fence, you read a fence, when you get closer, it's identical to a wire mesh, but it's not, it's a drawing. I find it difficult to achieve that result with drawing, especially with such synthetic representations of things.
IESI think I work with a potential fragmentation of perception that even causes me some anguish. And this is present in all these works; the glass, which is formed of concentric circles, can dissolve, its meaning can dissolve. And this, for me, is a human drama. At the same time that we don't free ourselves from our physical body, we have a mind that seems to be immaterial, and that works with concepts. I think that not even the most advanced neurology has defined what the mind is to this day.
LKYes, but I see this clarity in the fact that perception is not only not passive, but is permeated by thought and speculation all the time.
IESBased on experience, right?
LKYes, but experience is always also reasoning; it happens within experience. And it's that reasoning that you seem to be provoking, not mere illusions.
Speaking of freedom, I started thinking about these templates and the irony of creating instruments that also produce flaws and inaccuracies. It's as if you were telling us that this design is always subjective, regardless of whether it's done freehand with a pen directly on paper or using instruments.
I thought about other artists who reflect on drawing, who explore the circumstances and tools of drawing, the meanings of drawing. And I remembered Regina Silveira.
IES: Clear.
LKShe did a series of works on the art of drawing, in which she uses figures that resemble those in drawing manuals… But I was thinking that, of course, your approaches to the idea of drawing are different. You spoke of an idea of freedom that has something to do with Regina's opposition to the idea of good drawing. And I remembered that we call freehand drawing those that are not done with tools. When there is no ruler, when there is no eraser, when there is no compass, when there are no templates and all those things that you deliberately, ostentatiously, construct and use. Is drawing freer when there are no templates, or do these templates give you access to a drawing that ends up being freer?
IESGood question.
LKBecause you are free from other things, free from style, there are several things you are freed from by using the template.
IESI never really thought much about the issue of freedom in relation to those specific drawings. As I said, I came to art through drawing; I was a child who drew compulsively, I only wanted to draw and build three-dimensional things. And I was interested in everything that was representation, and non-representation as well, even abstract things that I didn't understand; that sparked my interest, a desire to copy. I drew a lot, a lot indeed, of the human figure, believe it or not. I studied anatomy with a medical book. Not scientific anatomy, but anatomical images.
LKI have the impression that the works in the exhibition converse quite a bit with each other. You see the Compass and think of the Study for a Cup (2014); the template can also be understood as a drawing instrument, so it ends up being similar to the Compass. But the giant nut on top of the base seems different to me. It's a piece that maintains a certain opacity. You can construct interpretations and establish connections with the other works, but it never completely surrenders to them. There's something there that remains irreducible, as if the piece insisted on its own presence and said: "I am only this, I am here." "I don't function for anything, and I'm not even the size of a nut."
IESYes, the sow is the most tautological.
LKI actually found that this became clearer to me when I thought about what to ask you about her. It was as if she wasn't suitable for a question, as if she were really opaque.
IESIt comes from that work, which I call Fixed Base (2016), which consisted of four large nuts and bolts on the floor forming a square.
LKYes, I see that in relation to her body of work she's not alone, but here, in the exhibition, she seems deliberately alone.
IESThere's a question that interests me, which is also a sculptural one. It's about being able to see, to examine, what the inside of a screw is like, this microcosm, in this industrial case, that humanity has created. I did an exhibition of drawings called "Not Hidden, But Unnoticed," which dealt precisely with these objects.
LKYes, when you zoom in you can see a lot of things that we couldn't see before. But again, it's funny you mention sculptural; I totally understand. I think you find a kind of essence of the object, which is its form, how it is before it's used for.
IESIt's a shape, it's a common object, but it's super complex at the same time, that spiral, that which is potentially infinite. When I saw it separately, I thought, "wow, I have to use this." And because it's a "holey thing," it also has to do with the direction of the gaze, which is present in the keyhole.
LKI hadn't thought about that, that you can see through them, but you can't see through your keyhole sculpture.
IESThere are many things we can relate to it. It's different from Compasso, which has twenty-something pieces, also expanded. Whereas there it's just one thing.
LKIn Line and Shadow 4, it's almost as if you're saying that a line equals a shadow, right? But what intrigued me most is that it seems like you're telling us that everything is projection. Is that it?
IES: I don't know.
LKIs everything a drawing?
IESI started doing this Line and Shadow technique with graphite drawings. I did a series using only graphite and also carbon paper, which is the kind of technique that's at the zero degree of complexity, where one stroke represents the line and the other the shadow, as if they were one and the same. The shadow is also a line. And then I had this idea to do it in space, I did some variations of it in an exhibition in Scotland, it's a rather abstract line, it could represent a stem, something, but…
LKBut it is a line, only in its version it is a thing, because it produces a shadow.
IESThat's exactly it. This immateriality, combined with a supposed materiality, also produces the strangeness of an illusion. I did it here at home, I've already taken it down, but it was on this wall here, and people thought there was something there. I find that fascinating in the universe of representation. Sometimes almost nothing becomes "a thing".
LKYou are in the field of those who think like those who draw, even when you are not drawing, even when you make a three-dimensional object, even when you make pieces in stone in Pietrasanta. And for those who draw, there is the projective dimension.
IESIt's because I, and I imagine most artists, in a way, live drawing mentally. I live drawing mentally, I live drawing and imagining. And this whole world of things that we can do in our imagination and that we will take to the grave.
LKYes, but to some extent your drawing is a thing in the world.
IESHow?
LKYour drawing ends up becoming a thing in the world. It's true that it also exists in the virtual realm; it becomes a thing, and that becomes an event. I think that's different from simply representing something.
IESIt operates in a space between the virtual and the real; it's not a dream universe, although I often relate my obsessions to recurring dreams. We talked about almost all the works in the exhibition, which aren't many, but I think it's interesting to point out that it's largely an exhibition about drawing, but not only about drawing, and that it was triggered by the proposal to show a recent sculpture.
LKA sculpture that wants to contain a lot.
IESBut it's not a desire to mystify sculpture, I don't like that, but there is indeed a technical difficulty; it took 7 years to complete this work. I think it was the work I struggled the most to do.
LKBut there's something I think is important to say, which has to do with how your work is interpreted. It impresses us, especially artists who know how things work, the machines, the materials and the tools, the refinement and technical sophistication in the production of the objects. But when we are in front of them, what can amaze us, captivate us, is not exactly that; it's their very presence, how they are and what they are, not how they were obtained.
IESThe effort implicit in it…
LKIt is not virtuosity that captivates us in these works, but rather the fact that, combined with the rigor of their execution, they achieve a kind of power.
IESBecause if there is any virtuosity, it is conceptual virtuosity.
LKYes. It's because things are only precious in the realm of ideas. So, because they are perfect, or identical, or possess all those qualities they assume when produced with such rigor, they seem more ideal. It's as if we access the realm of ideas through matter; this captivates us greatly.
IESI don't know if it's implied or explicit, but one thing that's important to me is that there's a virtuosity, in the technical sense, of anonymous people who worked to make this achievement possible…
LKWhich isn't just yours, of course.
IESOh my god, absolutely not, this has been under development for centuries, leading to machines, and then there's the worker who knows how to do it, which I find incredible. And that's a world of confrontation for me. I remember the first time I arrived at a metalworking factory almost trembling, afraid to present a project to a company that made drill bits for Petrobras. And I brought a drawing of a small lampshade. And that's a very masculine world, isn't it?
LKIt's a bit like going to Pietrasanta to make a shoebox.
IES: Exactly.
LKBut they must enjoy it, right? It must be a bit nonsensical for the people involved…
IESAt first I felt some resistance, but then they started to like it.
LKBecause the challenge there isn't technical, it's conceptual.
IESI find this interesting, this coexistence with industry, with the "craftsmanship" of these practices.
LKI think it's super important because, once again, you make this slip into an objective dimension, but there's a person who operated the machine. So it's not just you who is a subject, it's not just the compass that is a subject, the machine, but the person who is operating it as well.
