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. 

The artist Zilvinas Kempinas participates in two group shows opening in February. In ThisPlay, held at the Arter cultural hub in Istanbul, the work Fountain is displayed alongside more than fifty works. Curated by Emre Baykal, the show seeks to reflect on concepts of childhood and play, exploring the liberating aspect of play. In Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art, his work Lemniscate is set in a context that seeks to explore how electricity transformed artistic practice from the early 20th century to the present day.

Zilvinas Kempinas is a worldwide reference in kinetic art. Kempinas employs nontraditional materials to create active and dynamic exhibits, most commonly as installations. In many of his works, Kempinas utilizes his signature material, unwound magnetic tape. The artist fully uses its physical properties – its weightlessness, mobility and transparency. Kempinas plays with the graphic qualities of the magnetic tape inherent to its color, texture and reflectiveness.

Zilvinas Kempinas participates in the group show Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art. The exhibition will feature over ninety works of art by several generations of artists from all over the world, including independent figures and members of emblematic groups such as Bauhaus, GRAV, Dvizhenie, ZERO, and teamLab. The show will include the work of pioneers such as Mary Ellen Bute, Zdeněk Pešánek, László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Duchamp; established names such as Julio Le Parc, Yaacov Agam, Woody and Steina Vašulka, François Morellet, Adéla Matasová, William Kentridge; and representatives from younger generations such as Refik Anadol, Žilvinas Kempinas, Shilpa Gupta, Olafur Eliasson, Michael Bielický & Kamila B. Richter.

David Batchelor remains on view at Hauser Wirth gallery, in Zurich, Switzerland, until March 9, 2022. In Chromophilia, meaning the love of colour, the artists on view trace the complexity and possibility of colour, emancipated to differing degrees from line and form, within their chosen medium either synthetic or found – from liquid paint to sewn fabric, from coloured glass to LEDs, from neon to bindis. Chromophilia will bring together paintings, collages, sculptures and installations by artists including Phyllida Barlow, David Batchelor, Larry Bell, Louise Bourgeois, Frank Bowling, Geta Bratescu, Alexander Calder, Martin Creed, Günther Förg, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Bharti Kher, Yves Klein, Jason Rhoades, Pipilotti Rist, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Elisabeth Wild.

Jaime Lauriano participates on the show Coleção Sartori – A arte contemporânea habita Antônio Prado” with the works “Brinquedo de furar moletom (polícia militar 1)” e “Não respeitamos símbolos racistas”, which are part of Paulo Sartori’s collection.

In the series “Brinquedos de furar moletom” [Toy that pierces sweatpants], exhibited for the first time at MAC Niterói, the artist creates a small barricade made of “colonial bricks”. Above this wall are miniatures of transports related to militarism, defense and violence. Gun bullets used by military police officers were collected in different cities in Brazil and constitute the iron that make up the material of these replicas.

The histories of colonialism in Latin America and its traumatic effects on contemporaneity are one of the centers of interest for Jaime Lauriano’s research. The title of the work was taken from a verse of the song “Vida loka parte 1”, by the rap group Racionais MCs.

The series of works, “E se o apedrejado fosse você”, recreates the illustrations of maps and nautical letters, one of the most emblematic scenes in recent history – the crusades and the “discovery of the new world”. However, differently from the original version, which used a wide range of colours to highlight the vitality of the newly explored region, Lauriano simplifies it to a simple black and white overlay. It is, therefore, a reinterpretation of the first efforts to represent the colonisation system and its exploitation of enslaved labour, the first proletariat of what would later be consolidated as a “country”. The harmony found and exalted in the originals is disturbed by the inscription of the terms epistemicide, genocide, racial democracy and structural racism taken from books that guide the construction of the History of Brazil. The phrase that gives title to this series of drawings and that we find inscribed in the drawings was taken from posters of demonstrations against “religious racism” in Brazil. In these demonstrations, practitioners of religions of African-Brazilian origin protest against the violence imposed on their bodies and their temples.

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