The crystal sculpture Dome was modelled on the shape of a clock dome, yet in inverse fashion Espírito Santo substitutes the hollow glass with solid crystal, altering what began as a functional covering into a precious, minimalist form. Light that was once contained within the glass is now reflected within the material.


Although we equate the bottle shape with that of function, the enlarged scale and precious material asks us to reconsider its curves and indentation of a utilitarian vessel as those of a minimal form. Espírito Santo presents us with a representation of a representation, developing our sensitivity to the objects that surround us, and the space we inhabit.

“Espirito Santo, who has exhibited consistently since the mid 1980s, has established an aesthetic that reflects his conceptual concerns by means of an obsessive attention to detail in sculptures, drawings, and wall paintings that recurrently explore form, light and spatial folds with an impeccable craftsmanship and a discerning choice in materials…. At the core of the Brazilian artist’s work is an interest in that he describes as the ‘the duality we live in; between the concrete world and that of ideas. It’s an existential human condition; the artworks are a way of negotiating this, a need to deal with immateriality’.” – Camila Belchior. Art Forum, 2011.