This September,
Latitude: Platform for Promoting Brazilian Art
Galleries Abroad brought 14 international art world professionals to
Brazil to see the 31st Bienal de São Paulo & ArtRio for the
Art Immersion Trip. This programme was conceived to establish a
worldwide network and to create opportunities for Brazilian galleries
for future business, projects and collaborations.
ArtRio was the last stop of an eight-day itinerary and we asked four of our guests, Liz Munsell (Curator of Contemporary Art & MFA
Programs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA), Nav Haq (Curator, MuKHA –
Museum of Contemporary art Antwerp, Belgium), Adrienne Edwards (Curator,
Performa, USA) and Irene Aristizabal (Head of exhibitions, Nottingham
Contemporary, UK), to discuss their highlights at the fair.
Liz Munsell - (Curator of Contemporary Art & MFA
Programs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA)
Luca
Simoes
Engessados,
2014
Emma
Thomas
“Yessoed" are an obvious take-off from neo-concrete artist
Lygia Clark's famed "Bichos," yet Simoes comments on the Bicho's
current conditions of display rather than their massive art historical
influence. By creating heavy plaster Bichos, which are more of a burden than an
open question, Simoes critiques the practice of fixing Clark's forms behind
vitrines through our market (and heritage)-driven contemporary art value
systems.
Mauricio
Ianes
Progresso,
2013
Vermelho
Ianes' "Progress" melds an ephemeral performance with a
wall-hung installation of photographs whose order is determined by the
collector or institution who purchases them. Such dynamism within the
traditionally staid grid format suggests that progress is not a chronology as
much as a clashing of steps forwards, backwards, and in every which direction.
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Espaço
Avenca, 2014
Mendes
Wood DM
Two ornate branches that form an unruly web - an organic yet
somehow geometric composition - caught my eye in Steegmann Mangrané's work
"Fern Space." His direct gesture suggests that we are all involved in
the thoughtful process of building space from mundane moments and materials
around us. The delicate connections in this quiet work nestled within an art
fair remind us not only to see the forest for the trees.
Laura Lima
Bar, 2010
A Gentil Carioca
Amidst a frenzied environment, Lima's sculptures pause and talk to
each other over a Brazilian "cold beer." If we imagine the fair as a
marketplace in the traditional communitarian sense - that of a social space as
much as a platform for consumption - then the energy generated when works and
people talk to each other is as significant as any monetary exchange here.
Adrienne
Edwards - (Curator, Performa, USA)
Cao Guimarães
Brasília, 2011
Galeria Nara Roesler
Cao Guimarães 2011 digital high definition video Brasília shown as part
of curators Pablo León de la Barra’s and Julieta González’s Solo exhibition and
represented by Galeria Nara Roesler is a compelling visual articulation of
movement in relation to the monotonous, routine dimensions of quotidian life in
the national capital. This time-based lens is a particularly resonant site from
which the nation has can be imagined and through which one can understand the
transitional aspect of Brazil society. Accordingly, it is especially
illuminating in this liminal moment in Brazil – post World Cup and pre
Olympics. The video’s structure is composed as much from its use of montage,
various camera angles, and inflections of light as it is from the micro
kinesthetics which proliferate throughout its duration, raising on a multitude
of levels questions about the relevance of and means toward which the country
pursues progress, accumulation, and transitions.
Paulo Nazareth
Photographic Triptych
Mendes Wood
The question of repetition and other ways of understanding – indeed
questioning the tenents of modernity is poignantly manifest in the Paulo
Nazareth’s photographic triptych in the center of Mendes Wood’s booth.
Nazareth’s photographs suspend time, space, and the body with a conceptual
rigor that necessitates a profound questioning about the image and one’s
perception of it. These images in particular feature the artist standing in a
vapid space, a waterless swimming pool, ensconced in cerulean hues,
reverberating in light and shadows, wearing only pants, with a sign, as is
sometimes the case in his photographic works, hanging from a sole string around
his neck and covering his bare chest, stating “Surreal Is Mo En Mexico” in one
photograph, “Surrealismo En Mexico Regalo a Novia De Dali” in another. A silver
mylar crescent shaped balloon floats slightly overhead and off to the side, as
if to embody the proposition in itself, a line of flight. Nazareth’s work
is a 21st century, Brazilian critique of hegemonic discourses and the ways in
which certain knowledge is privileged – he suggests we look elsewhere if were
are to indeed pursue multiple geneaologies and to understand the body as a base
of knowledge always inseparable from what it produces.
Irene
Aristizabal (Head of exhibitions, Nottingham Contemporary, UK)
Montez Magno
Galeria Pilar
Montez Magno's Museu Potatil MM (2009), is part of a series of miniature
portable imaginary cities the artist has been developing since the 1960s. This
work was presented in the Solo section of the fair and the artist is
represented by Galeria Pilar. It's playfulness and geometrical materiality
appears as an interesting commentary on the modernist project so relevant in
contemporary practices today. Nav Haq
(Curator, MuKHA – Museum of Contemporary art Antwerp, Belgium) also includedMontez Magno's Museu within his highlights and stated
that it is a
‘very
nice Latin-American example of a fictional museum created by an artist.’
Carlos Contente
Drawings
Galeria Emma Thomas
Carlos' small
drawings with their signature oval shape offer a refreshing critique of
the Brazilian art scene and market. Their satirical voice approaches the
institutional critique discourse with great humour.
Claudia Andujar
Marcados Para (1982)
Galeria Vermelho
This
grouping of 4 black and white photographs is a later iteration of an important
body of work in the artist's practice, very relevant in relationship with
today's post colonial thinking and the rights of indigenous peoples.