ARTIST RAPHAEL ESCOBAR TALKS ABOUT HIS WORK AT THE “INWARD WINDOWS” SHOW

 

Currently on the “Inward Windows” show, the works “Aqueles que não sabem o que acontece” and “Micha #2: Casa Leme”, by artist Raphael Escobar, establish dialogues and tensions with the architectural concept of the residential house that helds the show. Designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in the 1970s, the house was conceived through an idea of ​​integration with the public space, a notion that is questioned by the artist through the social context in which the construction is inserted.

The two works were inspired by reports from young people who completed socio-educational measures at Fundação Casa, where the artist worked as educator. “Those young guys shared with me that they used to enter and rob the houses in the Morumbi neighborhood. So, when I was invited to participate in the exhibition, these stories did not leave my mind. What would happen if one of these guys entered this house?”, says the artist.

The first work, located on the front part of the residence, reads the words “Aqueles que não sabem o que acontece” (“those who don’t know what happens”) in a sign commonly seen on buildings facades. “This sign works as a prologue to the house and reinforces the private aspect of the space, and is also a reference to what happens at night, when these houses are being visited without anyone knowing. The phrase was taken from a rap by Sabotage, A good place, in which he says: There are three types of people / Those who imagine what happens / Those who don’t know what happens / And us who make it happen“, comments the artist.

In a second moment, when passing through the door, you can see a kind of key holder. On it, the artist placed copies of keys and a bump – a type of standard key often used to unlock various models of locks.

 

Both works highlight issues of class and create a dialogue with Paulo Mendes’ architecture, as curator Guilherme Wisnik points out in the text: “[…] this show seeks to creatively dialogue with the environments of the house, which already is, itself, a work of art. Dialogues that work both by affinity and subversion, established here by artists who work with the thematics of the city and incorporate in the problems and elements of the urban sphere in their work, creating short circuits and crossings between polarities such as the urban and the domestic, daily life and the monumental, the formal and the informal, the elite and the periphery.”

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