Matter for the images and the exhibition, the penumbra is the element that unites the four groups of works presented by Patrícia Osses in Ex-Libris.
Ex-libris is a Latin expression that literally means “from the books”, and it may be inscribed in a vignette in the inside cover of a book to show who is its owner. There are no books in the exhibition or in the images, but is through its absence that the visual thinking of the works is constructed. It is due to this absence that this element becomes potent and makes itself present.
Grenier (Sótão), work that opens the exhibition, consists in a series of 18 images in small size, made in the attic of an old farmhouse in the French countryside. The light, faded and warm, over the forgotten objects, led the artist to photograph as someone that carries out a painting. In the images the place is dense, the objects have no outline and their presence is doubtful. In Ex-libris this image-objects are unattached and disposed in a shelve just as in a library or a collection.
Bibliothèque (Biblioteca) e Étagère (Estantes) has its origin in the same Auvergne farm that lodges an 1800’s grange in its almost original conditions. The ceiling, with nearly ten meters high and all made in wood, is where the artist constructs a fictional version of the place, turning it into a library. The wooden tiles are transformed into thousands of old books that require long stairs to be reached. To read them the artist seats in the high binding beams of the grange.
Library (Biblioteca) is composed by images of an actual library, which is deprived of its meaning once it is completely empty. Located in the darkest room of writer John Osborne’s (1929-1994) house, in Shropshire, England, the library sheltered an uncommon type of matter. The artist photographed the shelves under the action of fog and light, filling them without occupying, preserving its emptiness.
For last, the video Dormitório once again counts on forgotten places and objects of strange collections always kept in shade. Created from photographs of a performative action, the result situates us between photography and film, inducing a permanent and practically imperceptible movement. The soundtrack following the work, recorded by the musician Thomas Rohrer inside Galeria Leme, emits a fiddle sound throughout the exhibition.
About the artist:
Patrícia Osses (Santiago do Chile, 1971). Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
Amongst her solo exhibitions stand out: Vigne-mère (Videira-mãe), Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo (2012), CaSAPINA, Prêmio Funarte de Arte Contemporânea 2010 – Ocupação dos Espaços, Galeria Mario Schenberg, Funarte, São Paulo (2010), Programa de Exposições 2004, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil (2004) and the group shows: Instituto Cervantes, Alhambra, ou dos edifícios que falam, São Paulo (2010), Trilhas Metragens, SESC Paulista, São Paulo (2006). Patrícia Osses is part of the MAC-USP Collection in São Paulo.
