Amorim’s Wicanders cork flooring is the star of a brass-inlaid floor covering designed by the prestigious Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes for her solo exhibition at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux. An artistic work that blends perfectly with the iconic space of the Museum’s Central Nave and the sculptures designed by the artist for that purpose with the aim of shedding a new light on this imposing space.
Covering an area of 1500 m2, the cork floor sculpture is made of Wicanders Corkcomfort flooring manufactured by Amorim Revestimentos and occupies the entire surface of the Central Nave of the CAPC musée. In addition to comfort, this product range highlights the genuine natural cork look. The innovation introduced here by Leonor Antunes is based on the combination of cork and brass, thereby creating a direct connection with the suspended sculptures that embellish the exhibition and are made from the same material.
According to Carlos de Jesus, Amorim’s Marketing and Communication manager: "After we’ve designed a cork flooring to be installed in one of the most important galleries of the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London, we are delighted to see it being used at the Contemporary Art Museum in Bordeaux, an artistic work led by the increasingly well-known Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes" and he added that: "Once again, the option for a cork flooring is aligned visually with the artist’s intended aesthetic effect while giving a warm and inviting atmosphere to the place."
In line with a challenge from María Inés Rodríguez - director of the Museum and curator of the exhibition - to shed a new light on this space and foster a closer relation with the visitors, Leonor Antunes claims to have attempted to “shift the space of the museum, from one impressive dimension to a more human scale, allowing the visitors to embody themselves in her installation thanks to a closer relation with the works.”
In this exhibition, Leonor Antunes throws again the spotlight on the beauty and elegance of handicraft, highlighting the traditions of Portugal, her home country, and her favourite materials: cork, leather, brass and cordage.
Today, it is possible to find Wicanders cork flooring installed in various museum spaces, some as far away as Tokyo, where the awarded Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was responsible for renewing the Nezu Museum’s space using Wicanders Corkcomfort Personality Nightshade, or in neighboring Italy, where visitors to the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum tread on a Wicanders Woodcomfort Classic Sucupira floor.
About Leonor Antunes
Born in 1972 in Lisbon and living in Berlin since 2004, Leonor Antunes’s design work is well-known for its affinity with modernism and its specific geometrical patterns, as well as forms and structures particularly valued by architects and designers of the beginning of the 20th century.
Mathematics, measures, scales and the beauty of certain proportions nourish her work that enters into a dialogue with the spaces they occupy, either by the way in which they echo the architecture surrounding them or by her use of the proportions as a tool to develop each new installation.
Her most recent exhibitions were presented at the New Museum in New York (2015), the Pérez Art Museum in Miami (2014), Kunsthalle Basel (2013), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2013), and Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof in Hamburg (2012). Her work has also been included in several international group exhibitions, including the 12th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2015) and the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014), and has recently been exhibited in venues such as the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York (2014) Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna (2014), CNEAI, Chatou, France (2013) and MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge (2012).
