SP-Arte 2023: EN

portuguese

“The images depict regions in space where stars are born” (Ivan Navarro). They colorfully portray the mixtures of gas and dust in the universe, with the aim of establishing relationships between the abstraction and infinity of the universe, on the one hand, and human thirst for power and survival, on the other. Lighted by LEDs, the series simulates the phenomenon of the eclipse and is the outcome of research carried out during the pandemic.

At the booth’s entrance, there is an installation by the Campana Brothers featuring a set of terra-cotta pieces shown at the duo’s first exhibition at Luciana Brito Galeria, in 2022, Polifonia Campana [Campana Polyphony]. They are small tables that refer not only to a regional Brazilian typology, but also to the artists’ affective memory. Returning to their origins in the region of Brotas, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, they revisited their relationships with their surroundings during their childhood and adolescence, and the discovery of one of the first materials in their repertoire: clay.

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Situated chronologically between the Brazilian concrete art and popcreto movements (1960–1963), Waldemar Cordeiro’s research phase called “intuitive geometry” resorted to the precise and organized aesthetics of constructivism to guide a freer and more organic drawing, without the rigidity of ruler and compass.

With the same aim of touching the viewer’s innate perception, these compositions also used primary colors, which gave rise to different tones when combined together and blended with white or black.

The artist conceived these tonal variants to reflect Brazil’s climate and lighting, while the lines were inspired in the morphology of our plant life. According to the Gestalt principle, the whole is more important than the parts, where the overall composition is the fundamental factor for involving the viewer’s senses, according to the work’s visuality and each individual’s repertoire.

Waldemar Cordeiro’s “intuitive geometry” phase involved concepts pertaining to a typically Brazilian abstract visuality and established him as one of the fulcrums in the transition to contemporary art in Brazil.

 

The paintings/objects the artist produced in the 1980s used basic colors and geometric forms that facilitated their production. Before actually executing these works, Geraldo de Barros studied the possibilities in drawings and collages on graph paper. These concepts, applied by the artist using laminated plastic sheets, cut out and mounted on wood and aluminum angle bars, were essential for attributing a more “industrial” identity to the works, with the aim of popularizing art. The works of his Fórmicas [Formica] series, as they came to be known, were made in the Hobjeto furniture factory, founded by Geraldo de Barros in 1964.

Bosco Sodi presents an artistic research focused on the power of natural materials and traditional Latin American concepts and values. The artist makes his works from organic materials and natural pigments, resulting in highly textured surfaces. Each is absolutely unique, as during the uninterrupted process of their making he assimilates chance happenings that arise, which become an integral part of the piece.

The work 3 (2022) is a continuing development of the recurrent and well-known research by the Mexican artist using hollow cobogó ventilation bricks in combination together on the wall. These bricks, commonly used in Latin American architecture, work as a metaphor for questioning the systems of capitalist construction and labor, and how they are related to the bases of Latin American society.

Material and its structure, as well as forms of connection, fixation and support, are the concepts that Afonso Tostes finds most interesting. And in the 2000s the artist began an investigation that now guides his work: tridimensionality and its representation in space. This research springs from a consistent evolution since the outset of his career, which has included the study of organic structural forms in drawing and in painting. Known for his large installations, Tostes recovers the previous histories of materials, mainly wood, revealing and transforming their narratives, according to a sensitive reconstruction of the exhibition space, or even through the resignification of preexisting smaller objects such as work tools and utensils.

“In making my sculptures, I work by associating natural and mysterious things to human predictability. I look for some hidden life in what is dead. Thus, the wood, once a tree, stops being just a material, and through physical effort becomes a sculpture and a field of reflection. I try, however, to find beauty in the simplest possible poetics.”

 

 

Afonso Tostes

Rafael Carneiro focuses his investigation essentially on painting, with virtuoso technique. His most recent works combine various elements that dwell in our imagination, such as fragments of videos, old encyclopedias, illustrations, etc. To this end, Rafael Carneiro has assembled a private image bank, which helps him to articulate his compositions more freely. His process of conceiving and producing his works generally includes music.

Caio Reisewitz’s research takes photography as its main medium. Through technical and thematic refinement, his work evinces an interest in human action and its social and political effects, whether in the natural space or the architectural space. While his photographic technique highlights the dramaticity among shapes, colors and textures, his artistic poetics constructs a nearly dreamlike aesthetic repertoire. These aspects establish a dichotomous dialogue between the real (that which is characteristic of the photographic record) and the chimerical (our own repertoires).

With a degree in visual arts from Mainz University (Germany), Caio Reisewitz has an advanced degree in visual poetics and an MA from the University of São Paulo. The biennials he has participated in include: 23rd Sydney Biennale (2022), Biennale des Arts 2022 de Nice, France,  the 26th Bienal de São Paulo (2004), the 51st Biennale di Venezia (2005), in Italy, and the Nanjing Biennale (2010), in China. His work has also been shown at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) (2010, Spain); Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (2010); the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection Miami (2005, 2010, USA); the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York (2014, USA); the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2015, France); the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2017), as well as at Photo Shanghai (2019, China). In 2020, he released the book Altamira, based on a collection of the same name acquired by the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. His work figures in important collections such as those of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (USA); the Fundación ARCO Madrid (Spain); the Collezione Fondazione Giovanni Guastalla (Italy); the Fond National d’Art Contemporain (France); MUSAC (Spain); the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) of São Paulo, of Rio de Janeiro and of Salvador (Brazil); the Musée Malraux (France); and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

Throughout his career, he has often resorted to nature as a source in his research, to create compositions of exuberant power and harmony that deal with problems the world is facing today. In Puturutuba, the artist criticizes the cutting down of the Amazon forest through a collage constructed from photographs taken in the Green Room – a space between the Senate and Chamber of Deputies of the Brazilian National Congress that features pieces by Oscar Niemeyer and Athos Bulcão, along with a garden designed by Roberto Burle Marx – together with other photos of the Amazon region made by the artist himself.

The Florada [Blooming] series is one of the artist’s most recent projects, where she photographed different arrangements of flowers and plant life, collected during her walks through São Paulo’s Pacaembu district, where she was living. The idea was to emphasize nature’s resistance to the environmental imbalance in the city of São Paulo.

Gabriela Machado’s paintings reveal small fragments of her day-to-day life. The scenes, colors and shapes that are part of her daily experience are the artist’s main sources of inspiration, like a travel diary. Since her recent move to Bahia, a new gamut of scenes has come into view: brightly lit beaches, the colors of warm nights, and the radiance of the local plant life. The artist has also started to include the frames as an integral part of the work itself, bringing them into the compositions: the various colorful patterns painted on the frames end up invading the canvases.

works on view at Collectors Lounge | third floor