Galeria Leme condemns any anti-democratic act. The vandalism of last Sunday (01.08) in Brasilia, which resulted in the depredation of public property, must be punished rigorously, as well as its organizers and financiers.

#DemocracyForever
#NoAmnesty

Sandra Gamarra is one of the 31 selected artists to participate in the 16th Cuenca Biennial, in 2023, in Ecuador. Entitled “Quizá mañana“, this edition “will reflect on democracy and the conflicts of the present”, according to the text of announcement and is curated by Argentine curator Ferran Barehnblit.

This year, Gamarra held solo shows “Buen Gobierno“, at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; “Orden de los Factores“, at Museo Amparo, Mexico; and the exhibition “En vías de desarrollo” [In development] is on display at Galeria Leme until January 14, 2023.

The ephemeral work entitled Cobra Grande will have the shape of a deforestation chain, a tool used in forest clearing in the Amazon territory, and will go around the Garden in front of the museum

From December 10th, the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo – MAM São Paulo – will present a new work in its Sculpture Garden, located in Ibirapuera Park. Signed by artist Frederico Filippi, the site specific Cobra Grande (2022) will be a temporary work, ephemeral in nature, given its composition, which makes it subject to everyday conditions. The initiative is part of the celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the MAM Sculpture Garden, to be completed in 2023.

Born in São Carlos, in the interior of São Paulo, Filippi now lives and works in the capital of São Paulo, and in the last six years he has delved into issues of the boundary between the forest and the advancement of industry. Cobra Grande is a work that forms part of a series he has been developing on deforestation devices. “My artistic research began with

the friction between matrices of different civilizations since the invasion of America and over time I became interested in this place that is in the middle of this continent, and which is a place of dispute, which produces a lot of greed”, he comments.

Since 2016, the artist has been working on community building projects in the Amazon region and in southeastern Brazil. This proximity to the territory led his research towards studies on this “deforestation boundary”, as he calls it. In previous works developed from that same place, Frederico brought reflections on the tools used in the deforestation process, such as machetes, chainsaw and machinery parts. The work in the MAM Sculpture Garden will have the shape of a large chain, a device used as an ostensive deforestation technique in the woods. Cobra Grande will be a life-size replica of this chain that connects to two tractors at its ends, quickly and abruptly pulling down the vegetation.

The large chain will be made of adobe, a material widely used in bioconstruction – a traditional clay construction technique such as pau-a-pique, for example – and will be placed in an arch among the trees outside the museum.

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Composed of clay and plant fibers, adobe is a material with low environmental impact. Each of the chain’s 180 links will be molded from this mixture. The pieces, however, will not go through the usual burning process, they will just dry in sunlight, getting an imagetic appearance very similar to oxidized iron. Because it is not burned, the material must fall apart due to weathering.

The artist points out that “the opposition of natural and industrial elements (snake/chain, clay/steel) constitutes the concept of threat and later deposition”. According to Frederico, therefore, there is a contrast that is also revealed in the viewer’s perception of the work, which at the first sight may appear to be made of a material (oxidized iron) and when looked carefully it shows something else (adobe). “These discrepancies on materials are very important for the work”, says the artist.

“The work by Frederico Filippi, using clay, matter taken from the earth and which will return to it, allows us to reflect on the perverse techniques of deforestation currently practiced. In the critical moment in which planet Earth finds itself, in the perspective of the environmental crisis , the work contributes to drawing attention to an urgent issue that is fundamental for the maintenance of biodiversity and life in general”, reflects Cauê Alves, chief curator of MAM São Paulo.

This Sunday (4.12), at 3 pm, Tiago Sant’Ana participates in the talk “Strange the history of Brazil” as part of the ZUM Festival of Instituto Moreira Salles. Sant’Ana will talk with Aline Motta mediated by Luciara Ribeiro, in the IMS Paulista auditorium. By reviewing the history of slavery and the black presence in the country, the artists amplify the debate surrounding the 200 years of Brazil’s independence.

Free event*: Estranhando a história do Brasil, Aline Motta and Tiago Sant’Ana talk with Luciara Ribeiro

When: 12/4/2022, Sunday, at 3 pm

Where: Instituto Moreira Salles, Av. Paulista, 2424

*Limited seats (capacity 145 seats).
Ticket distribution 30 minutes before each event (1 ticket per person).

Frederico Filippi’s work usually opposes elements from diferente universes, composing an arrangement of tension of the given reality. Now he returns to the region of the KM 260 of BR 319, in Amazonas, where he works alongside COOPMAIA (Igapó Açu Managers Cooperative) and Casa do Rio. Working in the region since 2016, the artist has already participated in the construction of the school of Igapó, and is now a part of the development of the Movelaria [Furniture] of Igapó, an initiative to generate income, permanence and autonomy through the handling and processing of wood. 

Frederico acts as a pendulum, sometimes in his studio, sometimes in the field and it is common for the artist to get involved with joint efforts and community projects, according to him, “just to be in his place of interest, bringing some work to that specific context”.

“ In the case of Igapó, the road paving plan will necessarily move all families away from the river, where there will be a bridge. The efforts are to reorganize and the idea of autonomy is so that families do not have to leave, neither send their children to study away. Permanence and a better life are the goals. In between, there is a lot.

Where there are roads in the Amazon, this tension exists. On the other hand, there is a claim for the right of access and also the right to come and go. Like all questions there, there is a complexity. This multiplicity of existing sides for this tensions is part of my work, being there working helps to absorb the ambiguities.

The border is a place of friction. There is a movement of advancement and resistance, almost sculptural, that involves things, people, spaces and the imaginary between two ends.”

The artist claims that he is a son of this side of the border, of the industry, of the asphalt. However, moving from here to there is part of his pendulum.

“ It is not an Amazon-specific issue, it could be the time of the invasion of America, centuries ago, or the wear of a rock to pull planks of millions of years of geology for sinks and kitchen countertops. What interests me is the wear and tear of the extraction, I am there because of the dream I had of going and I stayed and worked. I need to be there as much as I need to be back in a junkyard.

The types of conflicts and contradictions that exist in the advance on the forest still make me confused, because if you want to stop the lumber mil but you do not want the solid wood modernist furniture to end in the upscale neighborhoods that cry out against deforestation. There are tensions, ambitions, people’s needs; the asphalt is desired there just as chestnut tree is desired standing, the internet is desired as mercury-free water is. What is the measure of this encounter? Is there possible accommodation? This message is being read on a screen, these screens need minerals, the pressure that is not only from these malevolent entities in power, it is from the generalized habit of people. Among the enemies, we are included in the front.“

“Extractivism goes beyond the natural resource, it is a practice of wear and tear, of friction of things over people, discourses about places and places about things. The field of art is even part of the problem. This pendulum transit is my way of of moving, of rubbing one ideia against the other, one material against the other.“

The artists most recent production coincides with his research on the arc of deforestation.

“The arch is a metaphor for this advance, like a wave that reverberates from the beginning and goes around the world. Part of it is on the edges of Amazonas, Pará and Rondônia. It can be undestood as a continuation of the larger wave, which reverberates for a few centuries, like the navigations that took place by the sea currents or the migratory movements that expanded in a peristaltic way through the land. Forward and backward, pushing with pulse and rythm. An organism digesting what preceded it, transforming the unintelligible ahea into a construct, an enzyme, breaking down, molecule by molecule, a huge carcass, without haste, leaving residues and by-products that we can classify and that serve as our names“

“It means to me that there’s a constant friction between what’s before the arch’s convexity and the arch’s concavity, of people looking for a good life, trying to exist before and after the arch passes, of species trying to exist before and after, of ideas, of materials that meet, contaminate each other, of arrangements.

Nothing is very defined, the contours of what is right there, for me, are camouflaged like animals are inside the optical labyrinth of a forest.“

“Threats exist, but sometimes you have a drink with it at the bar. Everything I expected to see I saw the opposite, none of my expectations were met and that was the biggest learning experience, and it still is. The first time I went there, a 5-centimeter tucumã thorn entered my leg, leaving me lame, because I thought I knew how to walk in the forest. I was unhumble, as my friend there says. And at the time Jorge Menna Barreto, we were together, wrote about the episode:

Taking a step back, I felt a sting rip through my calf. Stings also on my hand as I lost my human balance and suspended for a few seconds the supposed ability to read the world around me. God is big, but the forest is bigged. I finally arrived.  

Then I had to relearn to see everything there and, consequently, here. I am stuck there”.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST, CHECK THE WEBSITE.

Today (05.11) opens the exhibition “David Batchelor | Alfredo Volpi”, at Cecilia Brunson Projects, in London, England. The show celebrates Batchelor’s long relationship with Latin American art, and Brazilian art in particular.

The exhibition will revolve around an especially commissioned tapestry – a reproduction of one of Batchelor’s Covid Variation paintings from 2020 – which was hand-woven at the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos, a workshop in Guadalajara that specialises in transforming, or transposing artworks into this new medium. This textile iteration has faithfully depicted all the imperfections of the original painting such as the drops of paint and bleeding of colours. It will be complemented by a variety of other works by Batchelor including some from the same series as the Covid Variation, which use colourful, zigzagging lines as the formal framework. The show will also feature examples of his Concreto sculptural works and Colour Chart paintings. Batchelor’s work will be accompanied by a viewing room presentation of paintings by Alfredo Volpi.

Batchelor wrote that, in his opinion, ‘much of the most interesting post-War Brazilian and Latin American art touches on three broad areas: abstraction, the city, and colour’. He also identifies these as three important pillars of his own work and that of Volpi. Colour is undoubtedly important for both artists. In Batchelor’s work, he deals with colour as it is experienced in the city: he has in his mind the colours we see on shiny plastics, advertising hoardings, and LED screens. Volpi lived, for the majority of his life, in one neighbourhood of São Paulo, Cambuci. His understanding of colour in painting would undeniably have been influenced by the light and colours which he was accustomed to seeing in his home-city. Despite this shared importance of the urban realm – the tone, texture, and weight of the two artists’ work is very different.

The exhibition remains on view until June 11, 2022.

For more information, access: https://www.ceciliabrunsonprojects.com

Last week, Heloisa Hariadne participated in Open Arts, an artistic residency promoted by Facebook. Selected by a world curator, the artist painted one of the walls of the company’s new headquarters in São Paulo over seven days. The facade was the second large-format painting carried out by Hariadne, who took part in the NaLata Festival last year. artist.

Check out some photos of the process below!

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The artist Zilvinas Kempinas participates in the group show ThisPlay, at the cultural hub Arter in Istanbul. Curated by Emre Baykal, this collection-based group exhibition revolves around the concepts of childhood and play. The exhibition aims to explore the liberating aspect of play, its defiant capacity to suspend and reconstruct reality, and the ways it transcends the humdrum of daily life to create unique systems and structures of meaning of its own, within the context of artworks, and the experiences they offer. 

Approaching art both as a maker and breaker of play through concepts such as competition, tension, chance, imitation, ritual, magic, trance, and pleasure, the exhibition opens up space for play for both adults and children where there is no winner or everyone wins.

The artists Ana Elisa Egreja, Evandro Carlos Jardim, Flávio Cerqueira, João Angelini and Mauro Piva participate in the show “Espelho Labirinto”, in CCBB-Brasília. The exhibition brings together works by more than 85 Brazilian artists, which integrates Sérgio Carvalho’s collection. Curated by Vicente de Mello and Aldones Nino, que exhibition remains on view until March 13, 2022.

Heloisa Hariadne, Jaime Lauriano and Raphael Escobar are in the group show Estamos Aqui. The exhibition, organized by Ateliê397 and curated by Thaís Rivitti, features 40 works by artists and collectives, which has passages in independent spaces and platforms of art, such as 397 itself. The show remains on view until April 24, 2022.