Truth on the Brink of Collapse
2025
Playing cards
210 x 120 x 17 cm (sculpture) / 6 x 130 x 27 cm (plinth)
All images © Fábio Colaço
2025
Playing cards
210 x 120 x 17 cm (sculpture) / 6 x 130 x 27 cm (plinth)
All images © Fábio Colaço
Standing at 210 cm high and 120 cm long, Truth on the Brink of Collapse (2025) is a delicate and precarious sculpture composed entirely of playing cards. Built using the logic of a house of cards, its form is inherently unstable — always on the verge of falling. The work creates a temporary barrier that conceptually and physically divides space, time, and opposing forces: truth and falsehood. The use of playing cards emphasizes the illusion of stability. Each card carries connotations of chance, deceit, and manipulation, underscoring the fragility of the structure and the uncertainty it embodies. A single disturbance could bring the entire piece down, evoking the tenuous balance between belief and deception. By turning a familiar game into a fragile monument, the sculpture prompts reflection on the instability of the boundaries we construct between reality and illusion — and how close they are to collapse.