Persistência e Variação [Persistence and Variation]

Persistência e variação [Persistence and Variation] is a collective exhibition wherein all artists display a set of their works of art. They are all different from one another and yet have one trait in common: their effort to work with a concise repertoire. These creators develop the same topics in their works of art, explore the same procedures or delve into matters they have mulled over since the beginning of their careers.

The history of art would lose much if creators such as Morandi, Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian did not search for aesthetic refinement. These masters looked for a fulcrum for their languages by gradually abandoning what did not seem essential to them. They worked from the variation of the same elements. At that time, such concentration was related to an attempt to leave behind the traditional ways to produce and see art. The traces of radical transformations in society and art had become stronger. The search for a more concise language pointed toward the end of the traditional society that was based on immobile positions. This future seems to have been overcome, either for good or bad. Today, the relation of art to that succinct repertoire has a different meaning which deserves consideration by using the exhibited works of art herein as a base.

This exhibit reveals how certain artists’ reasoning operates; how they can attain little variations using the same elements. We see the encounter of symbolic senses when Carlos Zilo uses mechanical figures, a complex three-dimensional work by Elisabeth Jobim, and color variation in an extremely simple structure as in Cassio Michalany’s paintings. The steadfastness of some topics in the work of artists such as Fábio Miguez, Daniel Feingold, Célia Euvaldo, Iole de Freitas, Rodrigo Bivar, Georgia Kyriakakis and Waltércio Caldas reinforces the insistence of the reflexive character of a work of art.

Today, we are exposed to images more than ever. This avalanche of representations, opinions and information is a substitute of experience. Oftentimes, art comes into play here for it devotes itself to answering questions that are exogenous to it and are regulated by social networks, the market and convictions. Therefore, creation succumbs to an easy comprehension of the world. The insistence on works of art in which the experience is not given so simply represents an important endeavor.