by Milagros Bello

Lugufelo creates his monumental sculptures under a scientific paradigm of optical geometrics. His work is based on a solid geometry of circles, triangles, and squares – either segmented or expanding ad infinitum under an imaginary approach of Euclidean and Pythagorean formulations. Lugufelo rearranges, alters, and displaces these shapes to create a higher visual dimension. Right angles merge into a succession of circular lines in repetitive sequences of spherical geometry and curvilinear coordinates. They also transform into perpendicular or orthogonal vectors of tensional forces. A sum of complex mathematical matrixes creates a deductive system, defining and questioning the role of abstract art, tradition, and modernity.

Initially, Lugufelo’s multifaceted geometric approach connects the viewer to a metaphysical world. On a second look, the work acts as a model for representational reality when the artist incorporates suggestive references to the human body and its parts, or to the animal kingdom.

The artist rearranges orderly mathematical forms into anthropomorphic shapes, rendering new paths of multiple evocations. Over the profuse volumes, lines, and forms emerges a mimetic model imposed over his algebraic method. The result is a poetic, hybrid sculpture of multilayered readings and resonances. The viewer enters into a terrain of a subjective discovery through the ecstatic combination of reality and fiction.

EYE depicts the shape of an eye encircled in sinuous curvilinear outlines over a triangular Pythagorean base. The human presence can be seen when looking through the right angles confronting the spherical geometries.

In ELEPHANT, the sharp metal cuts delineate an animal form and its subtle spirit, integrating the metaphysical and physical fields harmoniously.

The gigantic sculpture TORSO is a rounded composition of curved, intertwined lines echoing an imposing and abstract human body. With its two successive, expanding squares on top, and its two flat, metal plaques as dancing imaginary legs at the bottom, LOAD STONE proposes a non-objective visual tone.

Lugufelo’s sculptures are structures of spirited manifestation we are to navigate for our own discovery.

Milagros Bello, Ph.D.

Art Historian – Curator

Sociologist of Art

Member of the International Critics Association

(AICA-PARIS)