THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE, INHOTIM, ITAÚ AND ITAÚ CULTURAL PRESENT
GUIDE
GUIDE
Tsuruko Yamazaki, Red, 1956/2013 ©Tsuruko Yamazaki and the former members
of the Gutai Art Association. Courtesy: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
cover:
Itaú Cultural
April 2 to May 31 2015
This year Banco Itaú and Itaú Cultural celebrate five years of collaborative
work with the Instituto Inhotim. Located in Brumadinho, in the
metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte, the largest museum complex in the
country offers its visitors a unique experience in that it proposes a spatial
relationship between art and nature.
With one of the most significant collections of contemporary artworks
in the world, this is the first time that the institute showcases part of its
collection outside its main premises. The unprecedented event, a
celebration of the many years of partnership, will bring DO OBJETO PARA O
MUNDO [From the Object to the World] to Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo,
and is to run until May 31.
The show will feature works of artists made between 1950 and the
2000s. DO OBJETO PARA O MUNDO investigates four milestones in the
history of contemporary art and brings the artistic object closer to the
spectator’s everyday life. In this way the exhibition is perfectly consistent
with the actions taken by Itaú Cultural, which values cultural experiences
and the approach of the audience to the Brazilian art and culture.
Besides exhibitions like this, Itaú Cultural uses the virtual
environment as an important mechanism to disseminate knowledge. It is
the first institution to provide an encyclopedia of Brazilian art on the
Internet completely free of charge, including more than eight thousand
entries and viewed by over a million users per month.
Itaú Cultural
DO OBJETO PARA O MUNDO [From the Object to the World] is Inhotim
Collection’s first traveling exhibition, featuring works by 29 artists from
different generations and parts of the world. The show is being held at the
headquarters of Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo, after having been presented
at Fundação Clóvis Salgado, in Belo Horizonte. This publication features
short texts about each of the artists in the show, as well as exhibition
plans showing how the artworks are arranged in the space. It serves as a
guide for the viewer while also allowing for the study of the exhibition
after the visit.
The works represent one among many possible anthologies of the
collection. On the first floor, the show is subdivided in rooms that
examine four moments of the development of contemporary art:
Brazilian neoconcretism, the production of the 1960s, the Japanese
avant-garde group Gutai, and the practices of action art and performance
art in the 1970s. The historical documents and artworks are presented
alongside more recent works, indicating their impact on current art while
also alluding to the idea of a history under construction.
In the floors -1 and -2, artworks in various media and on different
supports by Anri Sala, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, David Lamelas,
Jorge Macchi, Marcius Galan, Marcellvs L., Michael Smith and Raquel
Garbelotti are grouped into two sections that examine the relationships
between sound and image, and illusion and perception.
The title DO OBJETO PARA O MUNDO refers to the movement of the art
object’s approximation with everyday experience and to the world of the
spectator, becoming dematerialized or taking on new aspects closer to
life. It is also a reference to the art event “Do corpo à terra” [From the
Body to the Earth], held in Belo Horizonte, in 1970, and to Hélio
Oiticica’s motto: “museu é o mundo” [the museum is the world]. By
making its collection circulate and by proposing new readings and
interpretations for it, Inhotim is contributing to the sharing of culture in
society, thereby deepening aesthetic and conceptual affinities with its
work over the last ten years. The lasting partnership with Itaú Cultural
ensures that this work has greater reach and perenniality.
Instituto Inhotim
ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS
Mexico City, 1968; lives in Mexico City
INDEX
7
Abraham Cruzvillegas
25
Iran do Espírito Santo
8
André Cadere
26
Jac Leirner
9
Anri Sala
27
Jorge Macchi
10
Artur Barrio
28
Jose Dávila
11
Channa Horwitz
29
Juan Araujo
12
Chris Burden
30
Kiyoji Otsuji
13
Cildo Meireles
31
Lygia Clark
14
Cinthia Marcelle
32
Lygia Pape
15
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
33
Marcellvs L.
16
David Lamelas
34
Marcius Galan
17
Décio Noviello
35
Melanie Smith
18
Gabriel Sierra
36
Michael Smith
19
Hélio Oiticica
37
Raquel Garbelotti
20
Hitoshi Nomura
38
Rivane Neuenschwander
39
Tsuruko Yamazaki
21-24
Exhibition plans
Ink & Blood, 1968–2009, 2009, ink on paper, set of 41 graphic material, variable dimensions
Abraham Cruzvillegas grew up in the Ajusco
colonia, south of Mexico City. Made up of
migrants from the countryside who came to
the capital in search of better living
conditions, the Mexican colonias are marked
by a strong presence of collectivity,
improvisation and precariousness. The land
is often settled illegally, generating conditions
unsuitable for construction – the houses are
in a state of constant change according to
human needs and environmental demands.
This experience with self-built constructions
is decisive in Cruzvillegas’s art. His work is
autobiographical and often created with
materials that are available and related to the
context. His background convinced him that
he could act politically through art,
constructing a critical discourse on reality.
In 1968, Mexico hosted the Olympics.
Ten days before the opening ceremonies,
a yet-unknown number of students were
murdered by the Mexican government
when protesting for freedom, in what
became known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.
It was in 1968 that Cruzvillegas was born,
and this is furthermore the year of the
oldest poster presented in the set Ink &
Blood, 1968–2009. In this work, 41 posters
and flyers created by social movements
between 1968 and 2009 were reproduced in
various formats on different kinds of paper,
reflecting the diversity of their original
contexts. Cruzvillegas based his work on
extensive research into printmaking
materials from around the world, used as a
communication tool by groups related to
social causes. This initial research gave rise
to a collection of pieces related to Latin
America, gathered in Ink & Blood, 1968–
2009. For his work, the artist has chosen
formats, slogans and languages that serve
various agendas of the left – such as
agrarian reform, the struggle for political
freedom, and resistance to North American
intervention. CR
7
ANDRÉ CADERE
ANRI SALA
Warsaw, Poland, 1934 – Paris, France, 1978
Tirana, Albania, 1974; lives in Berlin, Germany
Untitled, 1975, painted wood, 45 cm. Installation view, Banco Braescia gallery, Italy, 1975
8
André Cadere was born in Poland, grew
up in Romania, and before his untimely
death in Paris, in 1978, he was considered
one of the most unique artists of his time.
Little is known about his initial activity in
Romania. When he arrived in France, he
joined the generation of pioneers in
conceptual art, who in the early 1970s
questioned the dominant status of the
artwork and the museums. This context
gave rise to his celebrated Barres de Bois
Rond (1970–78), wooden cylinders that
garnered him the nickname of “Baton
Man.” The batons were handcrafted by the
artist, revealing characteristics of
handmade objects, with slight,
purposefully created imperfections. His
production is nevertheless based on
rigorous mathematical principles and a
precise sequence of colors.
As part of a project that interwove art
and life, Cadere carried these batons, which
can measure one meter in length, inside art
venues and elsewhere. Questioning the
systems of production, circulation and
visibility of the art object as well as its
indissociability from the market and
institutions, his appearance at vernissages
all over Europe became legendary.
Circulating among the visitors, with his
wooden bars in hand, Cadere would
stealthily conceal them behind the artworks
being shown and provocatively interfere in
the works of other artists. Cadere’s life and
art were always characterized by his
nomadic spirit, associating the idea of
freedom and autonomy in relation to the
art world. The approximately 200 batons
that he produced throughout his career
represent a tool of rupture from the art
circuit of that time, of which he was
paradoxically also a part. Still today, Cadere
is simultaneously inside and outside the
circuit that legitimated him. IG
Air-Cushioned Ride, 2006, video, color, sound 6’4”, still
Anri Sala is part of the last generation of
artists that came of age under the Communist
regime in Albania (1945–1992), then one of
the most isolated countries in the world. It was
during the period of the collapse of the
dictatorship that the artist began to study and
to produce his work in video, photography
and installation. His initial works were
focused primarily on history and its
possibilities to be retold, particularly in
relation to the politics of his native Albania.
His work speaks of art’s potential for reflecting
on and empowering social transformations,
through an outlook always informed by his
personal history. This is seen in Intervista
[Interview, 1998], a video in which the artist
interviews his mother about an interview she
gave as a young activist concerning the
dictatorial regime. It is also apparent in
Dammi I Colore [Give Me the Color, 2003], in
which the Albanian capital, Tirana, is
portrayed in its process of transformation.
In a more recent body of work, Sala deals
with the relation between sound and image,
and with situations in which time and space
are combined. This is the case of AirCushioned Ride, which documents an
uncommon experience he had on a road
trip in the United States, driving through
Arizona while listening to baroque music
on his car radio. At a roadside rest area, his
radio began to receive interference from the
frequencies of a group of parked trucks. In
the video, as he drives in a continuous circle
around this cluster of vehicles, country
music transmitted by another station
intermittently breaks through the baroque
music he is listening to. To the strains of
this soundtrack, we see trucks arriving and
leaving the parking lot, against the
backdrop of an endless horizon. With a nod
to the genre of the road movie, Sala
investigates an intermediate place, which is
never a point of departure or arrival. CR
9
ARTUR BARRIO
CHANNA HORWITZ
Oporto, Portugal, 1945; lives in Rio de Janeiro
Los Angeles, usa, 1932 – Santa Monica, usa, 2013
Situação T/T1 – Belo Horizonte, 1970, c-print photographs; 16 mm transferred to
digital media, color, mute, 6’
10
On April 20, 1970, fourteen bloody bundles
were found on the banks of the Arrudas
River, in the Municipal Park of Belo
Horizonte. It was Monday morning, and
passersby soon began to gather around the
bundles, made up of bones, meat, blood,
mud, rubber foam, cloth, ropes and chisels,
wrapped up in stained white cloth. The police
and fire department were summoned by the
population. The action was anonymously
recorded by Cesar Carneiro, using a 16 mm
film and a photographic camera.
The name of this action was Situação
T/T1 [Situation T/T1], an artistic proposal
by Artur Barrio for the manifestation “Do
corpo à terra” [From Body to Earth],
organized by Frederico Morais and held
April 17–21, 1970. The placement of the
bundles next to the Arrudas River was the
second part of an action that had begun the
night before, when Barrio produced the
bundles, describing his sensations and the
environment step-by-step: “the handling of
the meat in a state of decomposition …
smell… memory… time… smoke …
freedom, etc.… electrical ideas…” After the
appearance of the bloody bundles, the third
part of Situação T/T1 took place, when
Barrio unrolled sixty rolls of toilet paper on
the stones alongside the river.
Portuguese by birth, Artur Barrio moved
during his childhood to Rio de Janeiro.
Since the outset, his artistic production has
questioned the categories of art, thereby
challenging institutions while tensioning
the conditions of the production,
circulation and consumption of art. When
selecting the raw materials for his works,
Barrio seeks to create relationships with
organic residues, trash, leftovers – all sorts
of refuse. In a good part of his production,
especially that of the 1960s and 1970s,
there is no object per se, but rather
actions, events, and happenings that deal
with the real, the poetic and the political:
they are situations. JR
Variation and Inversion on a Rhythm, 1976, pencil and ink on paper, 64 parts, overall dimensions 188 x 224 cm, detail
For almost fifty years, Channa Horwitz
produced a vast body of work in relative
isolation at the USA West Coast. We will
need a few extra years to deeply reread her
investigations within art produced in the
1960s and 1970s – her relationships within
this context are complex and include visual
poetry, minimal and conceptual art, and the
artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). For more than
four decades, Horwitz produced drawings,
paintings and installations using rigorous
formal vocabulary built on a mathematical
system of notations that repeat and combine
sequences of numbers, colors, lines and
angles. That system, named Sonakinatography
by the artist, was developed as a way to mark
and express time, movement, and rhythm.
The Sonas, as the artist referred to these
works, are intricate compositions of
geometric patterns on graph paper and serve
as guidelines or scores for performances by
musicians, dancers, and actors.
Variation and Inversion on a Rhythm
belongs to a homonymous series that
Horwitz developed later and represents an
unfolding of her research on bidimensional
translation of movement resulting in static,
virtual manifestations. The work is
composed of sixty-four drawings in the
same format and with the same technique,
forming a considerable-sized panel. On
each drawing, Horwitz repeats the same
elements and introduces subtle variations
in order to illustrate the sequence of a
movement. From the same period as
Sonakinatography, a series of kinetic
sculptures entitled Breather (1968/2005)
show a clear vinyl bubble that, through the
action of a small fan located inside the
structure, inflates and deflates, as body
movements. Exhibited for the first time in a
world convention of anesthesiology, invited
by an MD friend, these sculptures
poetically immerse us in the rhythmic pace
of breath. IG
11
12
CHRIS BURDEN
CILDO MEIRELES
Boston, usa, 1946; lives in Topanga, usa
Rio de Janeiro, 1948; lives in Rio de Janeiro
Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73, 1973, portfolio with silver gelatin print and explanatory texts,
84 pages, 29.5 x 27 x 7 cm: edition 6/10
Inserções em circuitos ideológicos: Projeto cédula, 1970–1976, rubber stamp on bank note, 6.5 x 15 cm
Chris Burden is a central figure of a
generation of antiauthoritarian artists who
in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw
museums and other art institutions as
representatives of “the establishment.” Land
art, conceptual art and performance art
emerged as alternative propositions aligned
in spirit to social movements such as the
equal rights movement and antiwar student
rebellions that challenged the status quo.
While he is today best known for his
large-scale sculptures and technically
challenging installations, when graduating
from the University of California in 1971
Burden developed a body of works driven by
the idea that the truly meaningful and
lasting art in the future would not any longer
be based on objects, no longer being
commodity which one could easily collect
and hang on a wall. He was along with many
of his colleagues convinced that art should
instead be ephemeral and politically
engaged.
Burden took at the time with a series of
performances this new understanding of art
to a new extreme by transforming his body
into object and support of the artwork.
Undertaking shockingly simple actions,
Burden’s works disturbed the conventions of
the art world and of society very directly. In
Shoot, 1971, he asked a friend to shoot him
into his arm with a revolver in front of an
audience inside a gallery space. And in Five
Day Locker Piece, 1971, he had himself
locked into a regular university locker for
five consecutive days, whereas in Doorway
to Heaven, 1973, he was electrocuted and
cut in Through the Night Softly (1973).
Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73 is nothing more
than a photo album with images and texts
documenting these and other twenty
performances. This document constitutes a
valuable archive, through which these
ephemeral works survive in a both simple
and profound way. JV
Cildo Meireles’ works have been described as
‘philosophical objects’ or ‘material thoughts,’
pointing out the strong links between his
oeuvre and the various approaches of
conceptual art. It is from the unity of concept
and object, of spirit and matter , that Meireles’
art derives its strength. Since the late 1960s,
the artist has experimented with various
strategies and techniques, and within works a
wide range of materials have often come into
play. Meireles’ works are rich of symbolic and
linguistic references and full of poetic and
political substance.
In 1967–68, Meireles worked on a series
of 44 drawings titled Espaços Virtuais –
Cantos [Virtual Spaces – Corners], which are
imaginative variations on a domestic room
corner, indicated by the encounter of two
walls and the floor, and accentuated by
skirting boards. Some of these exercises on
geometry and on the virtual have been
realized as three-dimensional objects to real
scale. Espaços Virtuais – Cantos n°VI
(1967–68/2005) is one of the best examples
of Meireles’ mastery in engaging the viewer,
who tries to understand perspective with his
or her own movement around the object.
The banknotes on display are from two
distinct bodies of works. For Information,
an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, in 1970, Meireles developed his
Inserções em circuitos ideológicos [Insertions
into Idelogical Systems], exploring the notion
of circulation and exchange of wealth. For
Projeto cédula [Banknote Project], Meireles
stamped messages onto banknotes, before
returning them to normal circulation. The
messages, appearing in both English and
Portuguese, include various political slogans,
such as the question “Quem matou Herzog?”
[Who Killed Herzog?], referring to the
journalist Vladimir Herzog (1937–1975), who
was arrested and murdered by the military
regime. Zero Cruzeiro (1974–78) and Zero
Dollar (1978–84) make use of a similar
strategy, proposing the use of fake money and
questioning the value of capital, brought to
complete worthlessness. JV
13
14
CINTHIA MARCELLE
DANIEL STEEGMANN MANGRANÉ
Belo Horizonte, 1974; lives in São Paulo
Barcelona, Spain, 1977; lives in Rio de Janeiro
Fonte 193, 2007, video, color, sound, 5’40’’, still
16 mm, 2008–2011, 16 mm, color, sound, 4’54”, production still
Since the early 2000s, Cinthia Marcelle has
been constructing her oeuvre with the use
of a wide variety of media, ranging from
installation to sculpture, from photography
and video to performance. The artist works
with the invention of images and manages
to draw powerfully poetic scenes with the
elements she depicts and the materials she
uses. Time and again, the artist explicitly
seems to create circumstances or small
model-like configurations in order to verify
things. A model is always the abstract
representation of a system from the maker’s
viewpoint. It helps to simulate reality, to
question and understand. This is the
strength of Marcelle’s work, always
beginning with curiosity, with an idea or a
thought transformed into an experiment;
an experiment that ultimately translates
back into an image, a clear statement that
art is all about the act of setting out to
question things. Answers are given only
insofar as they are necessary to stimulate
further questions.
Most of Marcelle’s works use clear
instructions as departure points. In Fonte 193,
for example, the artist hired a fire truck to
drive constantly in a perfect circle with its
hose jetting water towards the center,
provoking the image of a fountain in reverse.
The scene is shot from up above and within
an iron ore mine in the interior of Minas
Gerais State. Over time, the red earth, which
fills the entire picture frame, gets muddy and
the circular movement of the truck
increasingly difficult. The film is presented in
a continuous loop, as an animated drawing
created through the man-machine-earth
equation. The changing light of the scene
clearly locates the action in time. As other
video works of Marcelle’s Unus Mundus
series – all investigations on simultaneity
and synchronicity – Fonte 193 is marked by a
Sisyphean degree of absurdity. JV
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané has
reinterpreted Indigenous graphisms, shown
images from a Tropical forest with a
soundtrack of the strident call of an
endangered bird, and filmed a family of stick
insects hidden in a geometric maquette. As a
both poetic and conceptual journey, his work
comprises drawing, painting, sculpture, film,
and site-specific installation, using closed or
expanded, pure or contaminated geometry in
order to provoke opposition between analytic
and organic, immaterial and corporeal
elements. His densely structured network of
references combines musings on time, space,
color, and abstraction with elements of
Indigenous culture, botany, and social
sciences. Living in Brazil since 2004,
Steegmann Mangrané crossed the Atlantic in
order to know the Amazon. Since then, he has
been building interlaced enigmatic narratives
with references that go from Brazilian Modern
art (Tarsila do Amaral’s [1886–1973] organic
inclination and Lygia Clark’s Bicho [Creature]
come to mind) to conceptual art.
Exhibited for the first time at the 30th
Bienal de São Paulo, in 2012, 16 mm was
filmed with a device specifically created by
the artist, through which a 16 mm camera
slides on a ten-foot-high steel cable. As an
optical penetration in nature, the camera
moves forward in synch to the reel’s speed: to
each meter of exposed film, the same amount
of cable is covered. The film is composed of a
long traveling panoramic deep into the
Atlantic Forest, a straight line that disappears
into the woods. By combining geometry,
perception and nature, 16 mm represents
synthesis among form, content, and process.
In some installations, the dolly camera used
in the film is suspended on a cable extended
through the exhibition space – an allegory to
remind us that this film is about the
occupation and exploitation of the forest but
also, as the work’s title suggests, about the
very natures of the creative process. IG
15
DAVID LAMELAS
DÉCIO NOVIELLO
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1946; lives in Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, usa, and Paris, France
São Gonçalo do Sapucaí, mg, 1929; lives in Belo Horizonte
Situación de Quatro Placas de Aluminio, 1966, aluminum, variable dimensions
16
David Lamelas is one of those cases in
which life and work become one. He
attained international visibility in 1967,
when he took part in the 9th Bienal de São
Paulo at the age of 21 and, in the next year,
in the 36th Venice Biennale. At that time, he
moved to Europe and, from then on, never
stopped to roam – London, Paris, Los
Angeles, New York City. For more than four
decades, his work has directly dialogued
with his life as a cosmopolitan artist. The
series of experimental films Time as Activity
[1969–2007], initiated in Düsseldorf,
Germany, is a meditation on the passing of
time in the metropolises where he spent
time or lived. The artistic context of each
place is essential to his production. And,
yet, his work goes beyond the boundaries of
a specific geographic realm, using his own
nomadic condition to understand art as
transitory and fleeting.
Situación de Quatro Placas de Aluminio
[Situation of Four Aluminum Plates] dates
back to his early production, when a very
young Lamelas took part in the
Argentinean avant-garde. At that time, his
practice was aimed at examining the artistic
object’s status. Situación are provisory and
architecture-defined situations in space. In
this case, a sculpture composed of four
generic plates of aluminum occupy elective
places where art is normally found, the
floor and the wall, forming the crossing of a
vertical and a horizontal line. Without
using any fixation resources, propped only
against themselves and the architecture,
they end up creating a small deformation
that calls attention to this ephemeral
disposition of things. Works such as this
one conducted the artist to a process of
sculpture dematerialization. Soon after,
Lamelas would start his renowned light
installations, Límites de una Proyección
[Limits of a Projection, 1967] converting
immateriality into object in space. IG
Ação no Parque Municipal, 1970, 18 c-print photographs, 50 x 75 cm (each); super 8
transferred to digital media, color, sound, 2’57’’
Invited to organize the 1970 Salão de Ouro
Preto, critic and curator Frederico Morais
proposed the holding of the show Objeto e
participação [Object and Participation] in the
galleries of the Palácio das Artes, along with a
manifestation entitled “Do corpo à terra”
[From the Body to the Earth], which took
place at the Municipal Park of Belo Horizonte,
during the week commemorating the
Inconfidência Mineira, a regional seditious
movement in the late 18th century. Morais
established some criteria for the manifestation,
including that the works should be conceived
especially for that place and moment. They
were to be shown in the park, and the vestiges
of the actions would be left at the site until
naturally destroyed. The works were to take
place at different times and places, in such a
way that no one could observe the
manifestation in its entirety. The participating
artists included Décio Noviello, who
responded to Morais’s criteria with the
proposal Ação no Parque Municipal [Action in
the Municipal Park]. The work consisted of the
release of smoke in various colors, at points
scattered through the park, using signal flares
and discussing the use of color in space.
At that time, Décio Noviello was developing
a production centered on painting, strongly
influenced by the pop movement. He was
interested in studies on color and resorted to a
wide range of materials and techniques to
produce object-paintings that questioned not
only the limits of that support, but also his own
identity and the genders. Besides being an
artist, Noviello was an Army officer, and as a
lieutenant colonel he had access to the
Technical Manual of Chemical Munitions
published by the Ministry of War, in 1955,
which served as the basis for the happening he
made for “Do corpo à terra.” By employing
military devices, whose use was also reported
in Vietnam, Noviello not only expanded the
possibilities of painting, but also transgressed
the military practices by using them with
playful, artistic and political aims. JR
17
18
GABRIEL SIERRA
HÉLIO OITICICA
San Juan de Nepomuceno, Colombia, 1975; lives in Bogotá, Colombia
Rio de Janeiro, 1937 – Rio de Janeiro, 1980
Estantes Interrumpidos #9, 2008–2012, painting on wood and textile, magnets, 93 x 44 x 9 cm
Relevo espacial A17, 1959/1991, acrylic on wood, 76 x 156 x 8 cm
Even though he is Colombian and earned
his degree in industrial design in Bogotá,
Gabriel Sierra says that he has more affinity
with Brazilian art than with that of his
country. It is therefore natural that a good
part of his production is fueled by a fertile
relationship with neoconcretism, considered
as the first moment of Brazilian art’s
independence, originality and overcoming
in regard to its European origins. One of his
key neoconcrete references is Lygia Clark,
whose works, like his own, transit between
the object, space and the body. Due to his
background in design, Sierra’s work also
dialogues with architects and designers,
such as Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) and
Bruno Munari (1907–1998). He considers
the modern utopia as an open paradigm,
and says that he would have wanted to be
an architect at the time when they did not
only design buildings, but also the objects
that filled them.
Among Sierra’s first works, Estantes
Interrumpidos [Interrupted Shelves] are
The youngest member of the Grupo Frente
and, alongside Lygia Pape and Lygia Clark,
one of the key names of the neoconcrete
movement, Hélio Oiticica can be considered a
prodigy of Brazilian art. His initial works – the
gouaches of the Metaesquemas [Metaschemes]
series – destabilize the orthogonal grid by
means of rhythms, distortions and diagonals.
These were followed by other series –
Invenções [Inventions] Relevos espaciais
[Spatial Reliefs], Bilaterais [Bilaterals], Núcleos
[Nuclei], Penetráveis [Penetrables], Bólides
[Fireballs], Parangolés [Parangolé Capes],
Ninhos [Nests] and others, as well as
combinations and variations among these
categories. His program of rigorous invention
points to an approximation between art and
life, taking color as an artistic element that
breaks the limits of painting and leads it into
real space. In parallel with his artistic
production, he authored a vast body of
writings on the nature of art. Since 2008, the
penetrable work Invenção da cor – Magic
Square # 5, De Luxe [Invention of Color –
hybrid in the sense of revealing his initial
interest in furniture design, though in a
subverted way. Constructed with wooden
planes arranged in vertical and horizontal
vectors, his shelves have their use
interrupted by the modification of their
state. Form and function operate here in a
strange collapse. Sierra is interested both in
the state in which the object can fulfill its
role as a shelf – that is, an element extracted
from the industrial universe and inserted in
the context of art – and the other state in
which its function is not present, when the
piece of furniture begins to resemble
geometric, monochromatic paintings
hanging on the wall. It could be said that his
greatest interest lies in this moment of
transition, between the two different states,
facilitated by the use of articulated planes,
recalling the Bichos [Craetures] by Clark. RM
Magic Square #5, De Luxe, 1977] has been
permanently installed in Inhotim’s gardens.
Alongside the Bilaterais, his Relevos
espaciais are his first tridimensional works,
suspended in space. Oiticica calls them
“color-structure in space.” What makes them
meaningful and fundamental in his artistic
path is the complex relation they instate in
the spectator’s experience. There is a gradual
surpassing of the viewer’s frontal relation with
the object, beckoning for the involvement of
the viewer’s body and breaking away from
painting’s elective affinity with the wall. The
object is not entirely revealed from any single
line of sight and is unveiled as the spectator
moves around it, discovering its unpeeling of
planes with gaps, overlappings and
asymmetries. The painting thus stops being a
window to the world to become something in
the world. “The museum is the world,” states
one of Oiticica’s mottos, which appears in his
text Posição e programa [Position and
Program] (1966). The Relevos espaciais were
an important step in this formulation. RM
19
HITOSHI NOMURA
F LO O R -1
EXHIBITION PL AN
Hyogo, Japan, 1945; lives in Tokyo, Japan
2
4
Turning the Arm with a Movie Camera, 1972, 16 mm transferred to digital media,
b & w , mute, 11’
20
In the late 1960s, Hitoshi Nomura watched
some cardboard boxes deform with the
passage of days and perceived that there
were new ways to think about sculpture. This
observation resulted in Tardiology (1968–
69), his first known work, in which a tower
of cardboard is photographed as it comes
apart due to the action of time, weather and
gravity. In his work, natural phenomena,
time and space are materialized in
ephemeral structures and actions, recorded
objectively and analytically in photographs
and films. Based on this initial
antimonumental effort, the artist created
artworks about the chemical properties of
different elements, recorded everyday
conversations in audio format, and
registered the movement of the stars. His
systematic and methodic work is like that of
a scientist, but his reaction to the
phenomena creates poetic narratives that tell
us about a universe in movement.
For ten years, Nomura carried a 16 mm
camera around with him. During that period,
he produced Turning the Arm with a Movie
Camera, in which two images are recorded
simultaneously and later shown together. In
one of them we see the artist holding a
camera in his hand while making circular
movements with that arm; the other shows
the image recorded by the moving camera.
Space and its occupation are perceived
through the artist’s action and body, recorded
from different angles and viewpoints. One of
the cameras is like an external spectator,
while the other is the extension of his body. In
the latter recording, there is a more evident
representation of time, with a movement like
that of a clock or the rotation of the earth
– which we know moves, even though we do
not feel it. In this small-scale staging, we see
the planetary movement and, according to
the artist, “we become aware of something
that could be called cosmic sensibility.” CR
1
5
3
Perception and illusion
1. Raquel Garbelotti, A clareira, 2000
2.
3.
4.
5.
Marcius Galan, Seção diagonal, 2008
David Lamelas, Límite de una Proyección I, 1967
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, 16 mm, 2008–2011
Jorge Macchi, Fuegos de Artificio, 2002
F LO O R 1
EXHIBITION PL AN
3
4
3
A
B
1
2
1. Neoconcretism, yesterday and today
Breather, 1968/2005. Sonakinatography 1
Jac Leirner, Fase azul (Numbers), 1995.
Gabriel Sierra, Estantes Interrumpidos #9, 2008–2012
(Composition 3), 1973
Corpus Delicti, 1992–2006
Hélio Oiticica, Relevos espaciais, 1959/1991–2002
Cildo Meireles. Espaços virtuais: Canto nº VI,
Rivane Neuenschwander, A uma certa distância
Jose Dávila, Homage to the Square, 2012
1967–68/2005. Inserções em circuitos ideológicos:
(Pinturas de ex-votos), 2010.
Hitoshi Nomura, Turning the Arm with a
Juan Araujo, Vasarely-Milan II, 2011
Projeto cédula, 1970–76. Zero Cent, 1990. Zero centavo,
Um dia como outro qualquer, 2008
Movie Camera, 1972
Lygia Clark, Livro-obra, 1983. Unidade, 1954–84
1978–84. Zero cruzeiro, 1974–78. Zero Dollar, 1978–84.
3. Action-art and body-art
Lygia Pape, Livro da criação, 1959–60
David Lamelas, Situación de Quatro Placas
2. Circulation and virtuality
Abraham Cruzvillegas, Ink & Blood, 1968–2009, 2009
Cinthia Marcelle, Fonte 193, 2007
Décio Noviello, Ação no Parque Municipal, 1970
4. Gutai and beyond
Kiyoji Otsuji, Gutai Photographs 1956–57, 2012
Tsuruko Yamazaki, Red, 1956/2013
de Aluminio, 1966
Artur Barrio, Situação T/T1 - Belo Horizonte, 1970
A. Documentation window display, Inhotim 2006–2014
André Cadere, Untitled, 1975
Iran do Espírito Santo, Caixa branca, 2003.
Chris Burden, Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73, 1973. Beam
B. Série Retratos videos. Making of, Permanent
Channa Horwitz, Variation and Inversion on a Rhythm, 1976.
Caixa preta, 2003
Drop, 1984/2008, films
Installations, 2006–12
EXHIBITION PL AN
F LO O R -2
IRAN DO ESPÍRITO SANTO
Mococa, sp, Brazil, 1963; lives in São Paulo, Brazil
2
1
3
Caixa branca, 2003, marble, 12 x 32.6 x 22.6 cm
4
Sound and vision
1. Melanie Smith, Aztec Stadium. Malleable Deed, 2010
2. Anri Sala, Air-Cushioned Ride, 2006
3. Michael Smith, USA Free-Style Disco Championship, 1979/2003
4. Marcellvs L., 0314, 2002
Iran do Espírito Santo began to show his
work in the mid-1980s. Although sculpture
is the medium that best characterizes his
oeuvre, the artist also works with
photography, wall painting and drawing.
Representation is one of his main fields of
study – whether in reference to art itself, or
related to architecture and industrial
design. In his work, ordinary objects and
common forms are transformed through
precise techniques, with material
traditionally used in the field of sculpture.
While developing his works, he
meticulously analyses each object, allowing
its folds to be seen, revealing its texture,
dissecting the planes that compose its
unfolded form. The industrial scale
associated to the shapes he works with is
contradicted by unique pieces that are very
concise yet extremely appealing. In his
production, the artist establishes a strong
relationship with pop art, minimalism, and,
especially, São Paulo concretism and the
Brazilian modernist tradition.
Espírito Santo’s sculptures are nearly
always made from a single material, which
can be marble, granite, glass or metal,
making use of the colors black, white, and
shades of gray as his main tones. Caixa
branca [White Box] and Caixa preta [Black
Box] both dated 2003, are part of a series of
sculptures that represent objects whose
primary function is to keep or contain
things. Besides the boxes, there are barrels
and cans which, made of marble or granite,
retain only the appearance of the object
that they are modeled after. The emptiness
that is essential for their use has been
substituted by solid material. By displaying
them side-by-side, in their black and white
versions, the artist underscores the rigorous
simplicity of these forms that here seem to
paradigmatically represent a spectrum of
other objects. This tension created by the
interplay between weight, shape, volume
and density is present in an extensive set
of his sculptures. JR
25
JAC LEIRNER
JORGE MACCHI
São Paulo, 1961; lives in São Paulo
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963; lives in Buenos Aires
Fase azul (Numbers), 1995, Brazilian banknotes and buckram, 86 x 116 cm
26
Jac Leirner collects everyday objects: souvenirs
from airplane flights, paper currency, business
cards, cigarette packages, artwork labels. Over
the years, she accumulates, classifies and
organizes these materials, which were
previously invisible for being so familiar. Once
displaced, however, to a new context, their
aesthetic/formal shapes are highlighted, and
the artist creates compositions using them as
raw material. The reading of the work
necessarily requires the recognition of the daily
use of these objects, which are transformed
into compositions influenced by historical art
movements, such as pop art, dadaist collage,
São Paulo concretism and minimalism. The
transit between the social and artistic contexts
is reinforced by the material chosen, whose
primary function is to serve as a medium –
either for financial exchange, or as part of
environments where trips take place.
In the series Os cem [The hundreds] made
in the 1980s and 1990s, during Brazil’s period
of hyperinflation, Leirner worked with paper
currency, back when Brazil’s monetary unit
was the cruzeiro and later the cruzado. The
play on words in the title [os cem means “the
hundreds,” while the homophonic os sem
means “those without”] refers to both a
number and a lack. The notes bear the history
of their circulation, with their faded tones,
accumulated dirt and graffiti made by users. In
Fase azul (Numbers) [Blue Phase (Numbers)],
they were arranged geometrically, resembling a
constructive painting. But Leirner’s recurrent
aspects of organization, repetition and
sequentiality are also present. The composition
consists of paper currency with random
numbers scribbled by anonymous people,
collected by the artist and then obsessively
ordered. In Corpus Delicti (1993), the objects
reveal the trips that Leirner took: boarding
passes and ashtrays pilfered from her seat
during those flights. The translation of the
Latin title suggests that what we are seeing is
the proof of a crime; it is the material
affirmation of the possibility of transgression,
which has interested the artist since her punk
adolescence and later advanced in her art. C R
Fuegos de Artificio, 2002, steel nails and office lamps, variable dimensions, detail
Situations and objects extracted from daily
life are the main raw materials in the work
of Jorge Macchi, who has been showing his
installations, paintings, sculptures,
drawings, collages and videos
internationally since the early 1990s. The
artist has used maps, clocks, musical scores,
and pages from newspapers, appropriating
and delicately manipulating them in
operations of obvious simplicity. By
representing trivial elements, by retelling
stories whose banality would make them
otherwise nearly invisible, the artist
indicates a new perspective on daily life,
while also transforming the understanding
of these commonplace situations and
approximating them to a sort of fiction. In
Macchi’s work, the spectator is not so much
a witness as an accomplice, someone
involved in the artist’s gesture and who, in
response, becomes part of the work by
depositing his or her perception in them.
Another characteristic of his production is
when the architectural space – whether an
exhibition space or not – is used as part of
the artwork, as the artist reacts to and
dialogues with it.
Fuegos de Artificio [Fireworks] – which
is part of a significant body of the artist’s
works in Inhotim’s collection that includes
the permanent installation Piscina [Pool,
2009] – announces what is represented on
the walls: a pyrotechnic explosion of nails,
light and shadow. The artist thus challenges
the nature of the objects and their original
functions, conferring extraordinary
qualities and uses to ordinary elements. In
this work, the ephemerality is broken by
permanence and immobility, which stand
as an antithesis to the phenomenon that is
being reproduced. The fleeting material of
the fireworks is frozen on steel nails, while
the movement of the light and colors is
paralyzed by the shadows. Macchi
transforms illusion into a presence,
engendering a somewhat violent, somewhat
fun interchange between fact and fantasy. JR
27
JOSE DÁVILA
JUAN ARAUJO
Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974; lives in Guadalajara
Caracas, Venezuela, 1971; lives in Caracas
Homage to the Square, 2012, glass and acrylic paint, 250 x 250 x 40 cm
28
Jose Dávila’s work arises from an intense
dialogue between architecture and art. From
architecture – his field of training – the artist
brings research concerning the occupation
of space, constructive materials, the
composition of structural elements, and the
mathematical calculation of the forces that
maintain balance. From art – which he
learned in a self-taught way – come the
experimental processes, the creative
freedom, the questioning of the forms and
functions, the work with memory, and the
perception of the spectator. His work is often
composed of personal commentaries about
the art movements of the 1960s and 1970s,
such as Brazilian neoconcretism,
minimalism and conceptual art. On various
occasions, Dávila has re-created iconic
works from that period, using different
materials and scales to add new meanings to
the already-existing ones.
One of these works of reinterpretation
concerns the series Homage to the Square, by
Josef Albers (1888–1976). For 25 years,
Albers explored aspects of color and light in a
large series of paintings, prints, tapestries and
drawings developed on the basis of overlaid
squares. In these abstract compositions, the
combination of tones coupled with the
asymmetric repetition of geometric shapes
allow for the subjective experience of color.
Dávila developed his homage to Albers and to
geometric abstraction, creating an
eponymous series, in which a monochromatic
square is painted on the wall and, in front of
it, transparent panes of glass – also square,
each in a different size – are overlaid. From
the combination of layers of materials,
various monochromatic hues are created
by the different incidences of light. That
which in Albers’s painting was pure
optical experimentation with color is
re-materialized in three dimensions by
Dávila, with elements whose precarious
balance entices the spectator’s to engage
with the artwork. CR
Vasarely-Milan II, 2011, oil on canvas, 50 x 99 cm
Juan Araujo’s works highlight a network of
relationships and references as elaborated as
the nature of his pictorial work. Since the
1990s, the artist has been developing a body
of work marked by the reflection on the
relationships established by painting and
architecture with the systems that
reproduce them. By summoning the
principle of mimesis, but also that of
appropriation and citation, the artist creates
images that have other images as themes,
coming from illustrations, books, and
photographs. The group of paintings about
Lina Bo Bardi’s (1914–1992) Glass House,
conceived for the 27th Bienal de São Paulo,
in 2006, marked the beginning of his
interest in Brazilian modern architecture.
From then on, Araujo dove deep into the
subject leading him to the Mineiriana (2013)
cycle, commissioned by Inhotim, in which
he worked with references from Minas
Gerais State, from Pampulha and Inhotim to
local baroque and its representation
throughout the 20th century.
In Vasarely-Milan II, the interior of a
domestic environment appears reflected on
the glass covering a framed silkscreen by
Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely (1908–
1997), hanging on that environment. The
house we see on the painting is the Milan
Residency (1972), by Marcos Acayaba, a
disciple of Vilanova Artigas (1915–1985),
one of the main names in the São Paulo
modern architecture movement. The most
relevant characteristics of the house – the
shell-like structure invoking an organic
shape and the connection between internal
spaces that bring nature “inside”
architecture – are juxtaposed to Vasarely’s
composition. Araujo’s virtuous
representation is far from being naturalistic,
however, it still suggests a counterpoint to
the abstract work. Vasarely-Milan II evokes
the transparency, unfolding it into different
layers of representation and notions of
abstraction/figuration and reality/fiction
that are always present in the artist’s work. IG
29
KIYOJI OTSUJI
LYGIA CLARK
Tokyo, Japan, 1923 – Tokyo, 2001
Belo Horizonte, 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, 1988
Gutai Photographs 1956–57, 2012, silver gelatin prints 35.5 x 27.2 cm
30
From the 1950s onward, with the rise of
ephemeral art such as actions and
performances, photographic
documentation began to play an
increasingly important role to ensure the
survival of these gestures. In these cases the
photograph has a unique quality,
combining the possibility of its
reproduction with the fleeting character of
the works it registers. The photograph is
not the entire work; it only bears vestiges
and traces of memories. This is the case of
the portfolio Gutai Photographs 1956–57,
by Kiyoji Otsuji, which serve as tangible
records of some of the first works of the
Gutai group – one of the most important
Japanese avant-garde groups in the postwar
period. Otsuji was also involved in another
important Japanese group, Jikken Kobo
(Experimental Workshop), in which,
beyond his own work as a photographer, he
portrayed works of other artists. A spirit of
experimentation imbues his work and that
of the artists with whom he collaborated.
In the images of the portfolio, we see
Saburo Murakami bursting through sheets of
paper stretched like the canvases of paintings,
thus breaking the pictorial surface with his
own body; Kazuo Shiraga uses his feet to
spread paint on his paintings, while Shozo
Shimamoto hurtles pigment bombs against
the canvas, re-creating the gesture; apart
from painting, Atsuko Tanaka tries on her
Electric Dress. All of these actions were part
of the 2nd Gutai Exhibition, in 1956. The
following year, the space of art was shifted to
the stage, and Otsuji’s photographs took on a
more nocturne tone. There is dance,
ephemeral material or the artwork’s own
destruction, lights, smoke and shadows,
along with the ritualization of the practice of
art – the body becoming the main vehicle of
the work. Some of these pioneering gestures
were revisited, consciously or not, in the
work of artists who worked in other places
around the globe. The eyewitness, equipped
with a camera, did not allow the movement’s
origins to be forgotten. RM
Livro obra, 1983, paper, plastic, card, 21 x 21 x 45 cm
Although the full extent of Lygia Clark’s
significance is still the subject of study, there
is increasing recognition of her undeniable
importance to the art of the 20th century
and beyond. This artist originally from Belo
Horizonte was a student of landscaper
Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994), who
inspired the design of Inhotim’s gardens. The
pictorial plane was her starting point for
dialoguing with the main artists of the
constructivist canon, such as Piet Mondrian
(1872–1944), Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935)
and Paul Klee (1879–1940). From the
mid-1950s to the middle of the following
decade, the artist undertook a journey of
emancipation from the cultural nature of
painting, lending it an objectual character
and reinforcing the importance of the line as
an element for organizing the space and
abolishing the border between the painting
and the world. Clark called this discovery
the “breaking of the frame.”
Her Unidades [Units, 1959–84] represent
an important juncture on this path. These
small monochromatic paintings are
constructed with a sheet of wood and
industrial paint. Other sheets are placed on
its surface, creating intervals and
overlappings, gaps and shadows, which
reinforce the work’s organic character and its
existence in space. The complexity of these
interests is brought together and narrated in
Livro obra [Book Work], an artist’s book in a
limited edition of 24 copies. There, Clark
uses texts and images to evoke a series of
works produced since the mid-1950s, in
which the space is twisted, reconfigured and
activated, and the experience of the
painting is re-experienced on the paper.
The book, with its multiple possibilities of
reading, is revealed as an apt support for
registering the artist’s discoveries. In a 1966
text, included in Livro obra and entitled
“Nós recusamos” [We Refuse], Clark
announced: “We propose precariousness as
a new idea of existence against all static
crystallization within duration.” RM
31
LYGIA PAPE
MARCELLVS L.
Nova Friburgo, rj, 1927 – Rio de Janeiro, 2004
Belo Horizonte, 1980; lives between Berlin, Germany, and Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
Livro da criação, 1959–60, gouache on card, 16 cardboards, 30.5 x 30.5 cm each
32
Having worked in painting, printmaking,
sculpture, dance, design, film, performance,
and installation, Lygia Pape was one of the
most innovative artists of her time. She was
a founding member of the Grupo Frente in
1954 and of neoconcretism a few years later.
Interested in the interactive relations
between art and its audience, the
neoconcretists sought to transcend the
formal remoteness of concretism and the
constructivist strategies of the European
avant-garde. Pape alongside Amilcar de
Castro (1920–2002), Ferreira Gullar (b.
1930), Franz Weissmann (1911–2005), Hélio
Oiticica (1937–1980), Lygia Clark (1920–
1988) and others investigated the social
dimensions of art, a research that radically
transformed Brazilian Art of the period,
gaining visibility in the First Neoconcrete
Exhibition and through the publication of
the Neoconcrete Manifesto, which Pape and
her colleagues signed in 1959, arguing for
the freedom of experimentation and
subjectivity in the work of art.
Pape’s Livro da criação [Book of Creation,
1959–60], in this regard, is considered a key
work of early neoconcrete art. It consists of
sixteen cardboard pages that unfold into
abstract, geometrical relieves. Each page is
accompanied by a title, poetically suggesting
a representation to each of the abstract
compositions. Telling the story of the creation
of the world, including the recession of the
waters and the invention of time and light,
Pape originally invited the viewer to create
meaning and a narrative by manipulating the
pages. Similar to Ttéia 1C, also the Livro da
criação is characterized by a contrast between
the simple and handmade physical object and
the sublime spirituality in its gesture. The
Livor da criação is an open work, as much
about the genesis of the Earth as it is about
the process of creation through each and
every viewer. JV
0314, 2002, mini dv transferred to dvd, color, sound, 4’26’’
Marcellvs L. has been developing his work in
video since the early 2000s, using recordings
of commonplace situations to make
compositions that reinvent reality while
creating a unique temporality. According to
the artist, the possibilities opened by his
images allow us “to discern the inaudible
power of ordinary, everyday things,
normally stifled by our haste.” His work
reflects on time, on the power of chance and
unforeseeable encounters, and on the
political and ethical urgency implied by
artistic production. His choice of video is
due to its portability, ensuring independence
in the making, editing and distribution of
his works. These conditions allow him to
proceed randomly and often solitarily to find
the scenes that serve as the raw material of
his videos and video installations.
The video 0314 (2002) belongs to one
of his most well-known series, ongoing
for many years: the VideoRizomas
[VideoRhizomes]. The word “rhizome” was
appropriated from botany by philosophers
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix
Guattari (1930–1992) to address the idea of
branchings of thought based on
connections and associations, that can be
broken at any point and be resumed from
one of its branches. Marcellvs L.’s videos
approach this concept insofar as they do
not follow a narrative, but rather function
as fragments of a story whose complexity
alludes to life itself. Each of the titles of the
videos is likewise random, defined by a
numeric combination given by a throw of
dice. In 0314, we initially seem to be
watching the projection of a scratched
filmstrip, a graphic sequence of scratches
and white points. Gradually, we hear an
increasingly loud sound of raindrops, and
we recognize that the high-contrast video
image is actually a close-up shot of rain
falling on a rooftop. CR
33
MARCIUS GALAN
MELANIE SMITH
Indianapolis, usa, 1972; lives in São Paulo
Poole, England, 1965; lives in Mexico City
Seção diagonal, 2008, paint, wax, wood, and light filters, variable dimensions
34
In Marcius Galan’s work, illusionism has a
prominent role, both in the way the artist
manufactures industrial objects with artisanal
perfection and in how he imposes strange
physical relationships to materials, in a way
forging their transformation. His syntax of
precision, marked by an economy of materials
and forms, is as connected to a Brazilian
lineage of neo-constructivist sculpture (we
think particularly in Franz Weissmann’s
[1911–2005] void) as it is to big cities’
anonymous visuality and to the ideological
systems ruling art spaces. Therefore his
affinity with minimalism must be understood
in the measure that his work has an almost
empathic interest in the vernacular form.
That symbolic exchange between fields
(industry and craft, city and art) makes it
possible for his work to be read both in
formal and political terms without loss for
either side, but rather fertile contaminations.
Seção diagonal [Diagonal Section]
extends the limits of representation and
object making, creating a movement
towards real space that makes viewers
reexamine their presence facing the work.
The environment establishes an active
relation, causing at first a reaction of
discovery and surprise, followed by a
moment that can vary from enchantment to
disappointment. The work is composed of
basic elements and materials, the same
found in any exhibition room: walls, ceiling
and floor; paint, lamps and floor wax.
However it proposes a displacement in our
perception by suggesting the presence of an
element that, after all, does not exist in the
space. The work happens in the
transformation of this space by including a
diagonal line dividing it, creating a field of
color. In this manner it gets merged with the
exhibition room – thus causing confusion in
our perception. After experimenting it once,
a fragile memory of the first moment
remains, even though its repetition is, at
least momentarily, impossible. RM
Aztec Stadium. Malleable Deed, 2010, video, color, sound, 10’29”, still
Melanie Smith moved to Mexico City in 1989.
Shortly after graduating in fine arts in her
native England, she started to create works
including video, photography, painting and
installation that reveal an influence of art
history, Mexican culture and her own
condition of being a foreign. Her work
reflects on the transposition of the
Eurocentric concept of modernity to Latin
America, mainly focused on Mexico. Smith
relates formal characteristics of avant-garde
artistic movements such as color research and
geometry analysis to nature and colonial and
postcolonial heritage. Research trips belong
to the procedures the artist uses in her work,
which led her to portray utopian projects
such as the industrial center Fordlândia
(2013), created by Henry Ford (1863–1947),
aiming at processing latex in the Amazon. For
the artist, the incompletion of the LatinAmerican process of modernization is seen as
potentiality, not failure.
In Aztec Stadium. Malleable Deed,
Smith creates a monument to Mexican
modernity. Filmed at the most important
stadium in the country, designed in 1968
by Pedro Ramirez Vazquez (1919–2013),
an architect known for the designs of other
modern buildings in Mexico City, the
video is a subversive response to the
official celebrations of the bicentennial of
the country’s independence. Three
thousand students from public schools
create huge mosaics employing Mexico’s
nationalist and folk imagery (such as an
Aztec mask and the country’s flag) and
from art history (such as Kazimir
Malevich’s [1879–1935] celebrated painting
Red Square, 1915) while messages are
inserted on a screen (“the revolution will
not be televised”). As they appear in the
video, actions, texts and images are
doomed to disintegration, invoking
potential chaos and mass action. CR
35
MICHAEL SMITH
RAQUEL GARBELOTTI
Chicago, usa, 1951; lives in New York and Austin, usa
Dracena, sp, 1973; lives in São Paulo
Free-Style Disco Championship , 1979/2003, slides transferred to digital media,
color, sound, 3’36”, still
usa
36
Michael Smith often says that television has
directly influenced his work, both in the
way comic acting is and in how the work is
executed, including live performances and
short videos. His work emerged in the
underground performance scene in New
York City in the mid-1970s, a time when
artists were looking for alternative locations
to exhibit their production, such as lofts in
SoHo and galleries managed by themselves.
In this sense, his relationship with the
public is also important as, just like in
auditory performances, the audience
stimulates the performer, who then
stimulates the audience. Often referring
and perverting the logic of entertainment,
Smith created and interpreted fictional
characters such as Baby Ikki, the baby, and
Mike, his John Doe alter ego, in order to
discuss themes that are dear to his
generation, such as identity, gender, mass
culture, and sexuality.
The slide-show USA Free-Style Disco
Championship (1979/2003) uses text and
photo to record a real story: after finding an
invitation to a dance contest, the artist
decides to compete. He arrives early at the
club to warm up, but, even then, he finishes
in twelfth. The performance is recorded by a
photographer in the audience, invited by
Smith to photograph the action also in an
incognito form. In the resulting images, the
artist offers a contrived version of the hero
in Saturday Night Fever (1977), a movie that
transformed disco music into a dream of
social acceptance for youngsters all over the
world. In the pictures, he dances and
interacts with the lights, the shine and the
reflections in the legendary New York City
nightclub Copacabana to the sound of the
mega hit Don’t Leave Me This Way, sung by
Thelma Houston. Here, a common man
aspires to be king of the dance floor, but he
cannot hide his inability. RM
A clareira, 2000, c-print photograph, 100 x 150 cm
In 2000, a young Raquel Garbelotti visited a
farm in inner Minas Gerais State where there
was a house, a garden, and the desire to invite
artists to create artworks. Among them, the
artist herself who, during her visit,
photographed a site for which her work
would be conceived, produced and installed.
Due to many different reasons, artist and
collector ended up not going ahead with the
commisioned project. That location, however,
would become, years later, the grounds of
Instituto Inhotim, one of the main
contemporary art museums in Latin America.
Garbelotti’s photograph documents the
landscape in an elusive way. A clareira [The
Clearing] is the image of an open space, but
its outlines are depicted in a blurred. This
image can be understood an a posteriori
thought, resulting from the active contact
with a fertile space. In a sort of hierarchic
inversion, the image of the process ultimately
became the commissioned work itself.
Garbelotti’s work encompasses
photography, installation, video
installation, and sculpture, in which often
the viewers’ perception is challenged by
plays with scale, modulation and montage.
Her language makes use of the uncanny –
such as in works where she appropriates
from modeling materials, disassembled
homes as if they were boxes, divided the
exhibition space with micro-walls or
created movie theater maquettes for
specific films. Thus, the representation of
space is often part of her interests, and the
art object is a kind of index or even
measurer of relationships between subject
and world. In A clareira, however,
alterations are more of a temporal than
spatial nature. By evoking memory and
generating a document that is
simultaneously an artwork, the artist
encapsulates us between past and future, in
a kind of eternal present. Here, to our relief,
our state is of pure potentiality. RM
37
RIVANE NEUENSCHWANDER
TSURUKO YAMAZAKI
Belo Horizonte, 1967; lives in London, United Kingdom
Ashiya, Japan, 1925; lives in Ashiya
Um dia como outro qualquer, 2008, 24 modified flip clocks, variable dimensions
38
When every minute passes, the clock turns to
zero; on the next hour, a new zero. Um dia
como outro qualquer [A Day Just Like Any
Other] consists of a set of clocks installed in
exhibition spaces or not, marking only zero
hour and zero minute. From the repertoire of
themes with which Rivane Neuenschwander
works, stands out the use of environment,
situations, and objects of everyday life, folk
culture manifestations, verbal and non-verbal
languages, collections of events, moods, and
affective memories. From such an extensive,
varied artistic vocabulary, erasure is a
recurring operation. However, erasing for the
artist has nothing to do with negation or
shutdown, but with creating spaces, silences,
and possibilities of restarting. The works
contemplated in this exhibition call viewers to
incorporate their narratives or to look at
themselves from a different point of view.
The series A uma certa distância (Pinturas de
ex-votos) [From a Certain Distance (Paintings
of Ex-Votos), 2010] departs from the religious
tradition of thanking for a grace attained
through votive paintings. In the reconstitution
made by Neuenschwander, the figurative
elements are extracted, there remaining
architectonic elements of color and perspective.
A similar gesture takes place in Zé Carioca nº 2,
A volta dos três cavaleiros (1944) (Ed. Histórica,
Ed. Abril) [Joe Carioca #2, The Return of the
Three Horsemen (1944) (Historical Edition, Ed.
Abril, 2004)], a work presented at the Belo
Horizonte version of this exhibition. The image
and discourse content from a comic book is
suppressed, and from the original there remains
the designs of colorful backgrounds and
dialogue bubbles. Pieces of chalk are offered to
the viewers so that they can create any story
they wish. Joe Carioca is a character created by
Walt Disney (1901–1966) in the 1940s, during
World War II, when the Unites States was
trying to attract allies in Latin America. By
embodying the stereotype of the Brazilian
rascal, the character likes to party, is idle and
often escapes his problems through tricks. On
Neuenschwander’s works, political, social, and
cultural determinism are suspended. JR
Red, 1956/2013, vinyl, wood, metal, wires, 270 x 360 x 360 cm
The Gutai group emerged in 1954, in the
town of Ashiya, near Osaka, in Japan,
within the effervescent context of the
reconstruction of the country after World
War II. Founded by painter and
theoretician Jirō Yoshihara (1905–1972), a
pioneer in abstract art in Japan, Gutai is
among the most distinguished artistic
expressions in the postwar avant-garde.
Precursors of happenings, its members
combined deep political and ideological
engagement with a desire to produce art
within a global context, transcending
boundaries between painting and
performance, object and process, art and
life. In almost two decades of activities,
more than fifty artists took part in the
collective, whose works included
experimental interventions in urban spaces
and in public parks.
Red is a recreation of the work Yamazaki
conceived for the First Gutai’s Outdoor
Exhibition of Modern Art in 1956. A red
vinyl cube suspended a few centimeters above
the ground brings color to the space, like a
large 3-D monochromatic painting activated
by the play between light and shadow, and by
the viewers’ presence. Our bodies are invited
to explore the work: you have to bend down
to penetrate the structure and, once inside,
you are contaminated by the color and
become part of a choreography of silhouettes,
revealed to the viewers on the outside. Even
though little known in Brazil, Red reveals
conceptual and formal affinities to the works
of the neoconcrete Brazilian group,
particularly with Hélio Oiticica’s Penetráveis
[Penetrables] series, due to the passage both
works promote from geometric abstraction
into real space. With an extensive body of
works, Yamazaki, at 89, is still dedicated
to painting on industrial metal, taking
advantage of its reflective qualities to explore
visual effects, furthering her research
on material, color and light, which has
marked her production since her time
with the Gutai. IG
39
CREDITS
INSTITUTO INHOTIM
ITAÚ CULTURAL TEAM
CURATORSHIP DO OBJETO PARA O MUNDO
DIRECTORSHIP
PRESIDENT
VISUAL IDENTITY AND LAYOUT
Rodrigo Moura and Inês Grosso
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
MANAGING DIRECTOR
EDITORIAL PRODUCTION
INSTITUTO INHOTIM ART CURATORSHIP
Antonio Grassi
Allan Schwartzman, Jochen Volz, Júlia Rebouças and
Rodrigo Moura
DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
GENERAL COORDINATION
DIRECTOR OF ART
Carolina Assis
PRODUCTION INHOTIM
Lucas Sigefredo, Paulo Soares (Producer in Charge),
Lorena Valadão, Gabriela Werner, Paulo Rodrigues, Elton
Damasceno, Valdiney Santos, Ingredi França
PRODUCTION
Endora Arte Produções Ltda. / Mauro Saraiva
EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION
Emy Watanabe and Jacson Trierveiler
EDITORIAL COORDINATION
Cecília Rocha
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Morgana Rissinger
ARCHITECTURE
Mach Arquitetos
VISUAL IDENTITY
Hardy Design
LIGHTING PROJECT
LD Studio
AUDIOVISUAL PROJECT
EAV Engenharia Audiovisual
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Fernanda Arruda and Renata Salles
GUIDE
EDITOR
Rodrigo Moura
EDITORIAL COORDINATION
Cecília Rocha
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Hardy Design
TEXTS
Rodrigo Moura (RM), Jochen Volz (JV), Júlia Rebouças (JR),
Inês Grosso (IG) and Cecília Rocha (CR)
TRANSLATION
Ana Ban and John Norman
PROOFREADING
Vera Lúcia de Simoni
Raquel Novais
Rodrigo Moura
Milú Villela
Eduardo Saron
ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER
Sergio Miyazaki
VISUAL ARTS
Jader Rosa
Lívia Hazarabedian
Raphaella Rodrigues
TEXT COORDINATION
Carlos Costa
ADMINISTRATIVE AND LOGISTICS DIRECTOR
MANAGER
COPY EDITING
Sofia Fan
Maria Clara Machado
BOTANICAL GARDEN DIRECTOR
COORDINATION
PROOFREADING
Luciana Soares
Polyana Lima
STAFF
EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION
RELATION
Júlia Sottili
Jaqueline Santiago
AUDIOVISUAL AND LITERATURE
EDUCATION AND RELATIONSHIP
LEGAL SUPERINTENDENT
MANAGER
MANAGER
Claudiney Ferreira
Valéria Toloi
PROCUREMENT MANAGER
COORDINATION
EDUCATIONAL SERVICE COORDINATION
Kety Fernandes Nassar
Tatiana Prado
PROJECTS AND FUNDRAISING MANAGER
AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT PRODUCTION
TEAM
COMMUNICATION MANAGER
IMAGE CAPTURE AND EDITING
EDUCATIONAL MANAGER
PRODUCTION OF EVENTS
Sérgio Viana
Lucas Sigefredo
FINANCIAL SUPERINTENDENT
Ricardo Leite
Bruno Diniz Andrade de Oliveira
Flávio Santos
Raquel Celso
Felipe Paz
María Eugenia Salcedo
GENERAL MAINTENANCE MANAGER
Lucimar Pinto
OPERATIONS MANAGER
Gustavo Ferraz
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER
Cristina Maciel
IT MANAGER
Webert Silva
SOCIAL MANAGER
Rosalba Lopes
Camila Fink
Karina Fogaça
MANAGER
Henrique Idoeta Soares
COORDINATION
Vinícius Soares Ramos
Januario de Santis
Edvaldo Inácio Silva
PRODUCTION
Cristiane da Silva Zago
Erica Pedrosa Galante
Daniel Suares (outsourced)
Wanderley Bispo
Andrea Martins (outsourced)
Priscila Moraes
Janaina Bernardes
Marcos Miranda
Vinicius da Silva
COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONS
MANAGER
Ana de Fátima Sousa
Hugo Alves
Luisa Saavedra
Nathalie Bonome
Thays Heleno
Victor Soriano
INTERNS TEAM
Alessandra Boa Ventura, Amanda de Freitas, Ana Luisa Vitalis,
Ana Paula Sampaio, Breno Gomes, Bruna Linndy,
Carolina Candido, Caroline Faro, Daiana Terra,
Felipe Nogueira, Felipe Silvani, Gabriela Akel,
Giovani Monaco, João Bueno, Kleithon Barros,
Leandro Lima, Lucas Takahaschi, Marcella Serrano,
Mariana Farah, Patricia Recarey, Rafael Freire,
Renata Sterchele, Roger Dezuani, Thais Caprino,
Thomas Angelo, Willian Augusto
TRAINING PROGRAMMES COORDINATION
Samara Ferreira
EDUCATORS
Bianca Selofite
Claudia Malaco
Débora Fernandes
Guilherme Ferreira
Josiane Cavalcanti
Raphael Giannini
Thiago Borazanian
IMAGE CREDITS
p. 8
Courtesy of the artist and Kurimanzutto Gallery,
Mexico City. Photo Studio Michel Zabé
p. 9 Courtesy Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia.
Photo Massimo Minini
p. 10 Photo César Carneiro
p. 11 Courtesy Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
p. 12 Courtesy of the artist and Chris Burden Studio
p. 13 Courtesy of the artist. Photo Daniel Mansur
p. 14 Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo
p. 15 Courtesy Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo.
Photo Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
p. 16 Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Sprüth Magers,
Berlin/London
p. 17 Courtesy of the artist, Belo Horizonte
pp. 18, 26, 27 Courtesy Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo.
Photos Eduardo Ortega
p. 19 Courtesy of the artist and Kurimanzutto Gallery,
Mexico City
p. 20
p. 25
p. 28
p. 29
p. 30
p. 31
p. 32
p. 33
p. 34
p. 35
p. 36
p. 37
p. 38
p. 39
p. 40
© César e Claudio Oiticica. Photo Eduardo Eckenfels
Courtesy of the artist and McCaffrey Fine Art, New York
Photo Pedro Motta
Courtesy of the artist and Jose Dávila Studio
Courtesy Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo.
Photo Edouard Fraipont
© Otsuji Seiko © Tokyo Publishing House
Courtesy O Mundo de Lygia Clark
Courtesy Projeto Lygia Pape. Photo Paula Pape
Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Fortes Vilaça
Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
Courtesy of the artist
Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Fortes Vilaça.
Photo Daniel Mansur
Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Hirschhorn Studio
© Tsuruko Yamazaki and the former members of the Gutai Art
Association. Courtesy: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
© Instituto Inhotim, the artists and the authors, 2015.
DO OBJETO PARA O MUNDO – COLEÇÃO INHOTIM
april 2 to may 31 2015
tuesday to friday, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
saturday, sunday and holiday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
[suitable for all ages]
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