{"id":52027,"date":"2024-01-17T17:42:57","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T20:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/?post_type=artist_text&#038;p=52027"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:00:24","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T15:00:24","slug":"germana-monte-mor-paths-of-the-imagination","status":"publish","type":"artist_text","link":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/artist_text\/germana-monte-mor-paths-of-the-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"germana monte-mor: paths of the imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rodrigo Naves<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"wpb_text_column wpb_content_element  wpb_animate_when_almost_visible wpb_fadeIn fadeIn animated wpb_start_animation\">\n<div class=\"wpb_wrapper\">\n<h5 class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: right;\">germana monte-m\u00f3r: percursos da imagina\u00e7\u00e3o. galeria esta\u00e7\u00e3o sp 2017<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"divider-wrap\">\n<div class=\"divider\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wpb_text_column wpb_content_element \">\n<div class=\"wpb_wrapper\">\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"s1\">I<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The works of Germana Monte-M\u00f3r began to gain definition in the late 1980s, beginning of the 1990s. In addition to paintings and drawings made with asphalt, she also made photographs of great interest and tantalizing sculptures \u2013 for they were looking awkwardly for a relationship with her drawings and paintings \u2013 as well as various experiments with materials such as paraffin, lead, Dammar gum, marble, etc.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, in attempting to recall the many works she has done, I find it difficult to escape from a kind of dark sediment made of a somewhat clear asphalt deposited on paper or canvas, which configures geological or organic aspects, both elements opposed to each other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"s1\">II<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The title chosen to name her book (<i>Of the goat<\/i>), such unusual name for an art book was not accidental. The strangeness only dissolves when by browsing the publication we find the verses of Jo\u00e3o Cabral de Melo Neto:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Black is the hard on the bottom<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">of the goat. Of its own natural.<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">In the bottom of the earth there is a stone,<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">At the bottom of the stone, metal.<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Black is the hard on the bottom<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">of nature without dew<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">which is that of the goat, that animal<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">without leaves, only root and stem.<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">which is that of the goat, that animal<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">of soul-core, of horny soul,<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">without gizzards, damp, lips,<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">bread without crumbs,\u00a0<i>just crust<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jo\u00e3o Cabral\u2019s verses offer a\u00a0<i>metaphorical<\/i>\u00a0passage \u2013 it could not be different, since it deals with words \u2013 between living and organic beings (the goat) and mineral and inorganic beings (the stone), present in different ways, both in the works of Germana and in the poem of Jo\u00e3o Cabral. The rustic nature of goats, their ability to survive in extreme conditions of heat and cold, seems to give them the solidity and unity of the rocks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Asphalt is a derivative of petroleum, not a mineral itself. It is a combination of hydrocarbons. Symptomatically, the ancient Romans, more connected to the empirical origin of this material than to their by-products \u2013 gasoline, grease, plastics \u2013 called it \u201cstone oil\u201d, that is,\u00a0<i>petroleum<\/i>. Thus much of Germana\u2019s work also transits between different states of matter, less metaphorically making the passage between the kingdom of the liquid things (the origin of living things) and the mineral.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Both the poet and the artist have a feeling close to the material world. Jo\u00e3o Cabral does not name an adjective (\u201cnegro\u201d) for nothing. It is the uniqueness of the means they employ \u2013 words and materials \u2013 that distinguishes them in a remarkable way, beyond any value judgment. And here we stop the comparisons so that the understanding of the works of Germana advances a little more.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In order for this most material experience of the world to become possible for the observer, it is decisive that the ambiguities between the various appearances of organic and inorganic matter present themselves to him. We know that cobblestones used in the pavement were made from blocks of granite. However, their geometrization \u2013 even if it is a bit rough (in Brazil they are made by hand) \u2013, conspires that we perceive more its regular limits than its mineral rudeness. They ceased to be rock. In the same way, what remains of the leather of a shoe in an elegant shoe?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Germana\u2019s uncolored works oscillate non-stop. Their boundaries are irregular and refer to organic forms.<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>2<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0Meanwhile the asphalt surfaces have strong mineral appearance. The black areas are\u00a0<i>physically<\/i>\u00a0flat, although\u00a0<i>optically<\/i>\u00a0they suggest an enigmatic depth. As with the coffee grounds, one might read a person\u2019s fate in these pellicles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Also some of her photographic series maintain a strong bond with her asphalt works. The large rocks and the piles of salt showed at Galeria Carminha Macedo in 2010 (<i>Pedra mole<\/i>\u00a0[<i>Soft stone<\/i>]) insist on this formal paradox; on the one hand, excessive stones, as seen from a low point of view that makes them about to roll or to overflow their physical limits. The large mounds of salt, however, suggest the shape of large white cones\u2026 composed of minute and unstable grains.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the exhibition named\u00a0<i>Luz negra<\/i>\u00a0[<i>Black light<\/i>] (2009, Galeria Anita Schwarcz), another series of photos points in the same direction. The pebbles that rest on the bed of a stream of crystalline waters are softened when seen through the water. It is a phenomenon known as refraction of light, which occurs when the light passes from one transparent medium to another, with different densities, and changes the direction. When placed inside a container with water, a stick is seen in a discontinuous shape. A swimmer in a swimming pool with the waters in motion will look like a rubber man. Until that moment, Germana only took advantage of a physical phenomenon that almost all of us know. The presence of her artistic intuition will occur only when she matches brightness (reflected light) and refraction of light. At that moment, the pebbles deform and lose their wholeness. Once again, we observe the artist pursuing her demons, wanting to prove with different techniques and materials the existence of a resistant background in all experience of reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"s1\">III<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In only four exhibitions \u2013 Centro Universit\u00e1rio Maria Antonia (2002), Pa\u00e7o Imperial (2002-3), Mercosur Biennial (2005) and Esta\u00e7\u00e3o Pinacoteca (2005) \u2013 the artist experimented with color. Still it was a shy job, since they had something of the light colors of the watercolor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The more luminous presence of the colors in this show at Galeria Esta\u00e7\u00e3o is a significant milestone in the trajectory of this important contemporary artist. Without giving up the difficult experience of a world that refuses to transform itself into a narrative, Germana adds to it a lightness, for by suppressing with colors a little of its weight and its impenetrability, she makes it more generous in its contact with the surrounding reality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">That said, the works also gain a new dynamic different from that suggested by the organic vitalism of previous works. The drawings are shown with a richer variation of planes, although only one or two colors at a time are brought to the coexistence with the asphalt. In turn, the figures, suggested by colors and asphalt maintain a less harmonious relationship among themselves.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They suggest depths, provoke each other, and weigh without elegance, until for a fleeting moment a configuration prevails, shows itself more firmly and submerges to start all over again. Somehow this description might serve to retrace part of Germana Monte-M\u00f3r\u2019s own trajectory. The attraction of the roughness of the world can suggest an existence conducted with difficulty and deprivation, although, as in the work of Van Gogh, leads to extraordinary and exemplary results.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I am by no means raising the possible \u201ccompensation\u201d for a life of denial by means of a redemptive art. Many bastards were great artists. But there are artists \u2013 and Germana Monte-M\u00f3r is among them \u2013 for whom imagination plays a secondary role.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What is the \u201cimagination\u201d in visual arts? It may be the clear and bright world invented by Monet, when painting outdoors, \u201csur le motif\u201d or the visionarism of Odilon Redon or Gustave Moreau. Because it is not an impression of the world \u2013 such as the Veronicas, the Holy Shroud, or the Roman mortuary masks \u2013 a work of art necessarily goes through the sieve of techniques (or artistic means) and a scheme (the imagination) that seeks to lead to realization from the always-nebulous intuitions of artists. There are moments, however \u2013 I think of Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Salvador Dal\u00ed and Max Ernst, among many others \u2013 in which painters, sculptors, etc. believe they find the absolute freedom of the imagination to suspend any and all obstacles to reality. They proceed as the dove mentioned by Kant in the\u00a0<i>Critique of pure reason<\/i>, which believed to fly more freely in a vacuum, when it is precisely the clash of its wings with the air that makes flight possible. Curiously, some of the greatest modern abstract painters \u2013 we take Mondrian and Pollock as exemplary opposites \u2013 incorporated the force of reality in a remarkable way. And to a large extent this was a condition for the greatness and pertinence of their works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"s1\">IV<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Germana does not have the diversity of works of, say, Mira Schendel or Paul Klee. Barely comparing, Richard Serra and Am\u00edlcar de Castro also seem to have pursued the limits that a material (the steel) enabled them. And this may give the impression of little diversity to their works of art. Needless to say, the means at the disposal of the American were not even within reach of the Brazilian. Once in Rio de Janeiro Richard Serra said that had Am\u00edlcar had different working conditions he would have been an artist of international projection.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I suspect (but I\u2019m not sure, it would be necessary to think more deeply about this) that artists moved by this rough feeling in the world also have a smaller margin of maneuver, which makes it difficult for their works to have a great diversity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The group formed by Van Gogh, Am\u00edlcar de Castro, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra and the Brazilian Germana Monte-M\u00f3r, who is totally unknown outside the country and little known even among us \u2013 a situation that should make gallerists ashamed \u2013, pursues a similar trait not necessarily indicating higher or lower quality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What I see in common in their poetics is perhaps the impossible task of making a lyrical poem or an epic almost without resorting to the ordinary notion of representation, by\u00a0<i>presenting<\/i>\u00a0these materials so little distant from the reality by the technique as by\u00a0<i>representing<\/i>\u00a0them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">1 For Tiago Mesquita, \u201cGermana\u2019s motives have something geological [\u2026] indeterminate terrain [\u2026] sand of the desert\u201d (p. 18). Paulo Sergio Duarte refers to her work as \u201camoeboid\u201d figures (p. 125). The two passages are found in\u00a0<i>Da Cabra: Germana Monte-M\u00f3r<\/i>. S\u00e3o Paulo: WMF editores, 2013.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">2 In this aspect, I tend to agree more with Paulo Sergio Duarte than with Tiago Mesquita, although I do not rule out the possibility that these qualifications are mere projections of the observer given the lack of definition of the artist\u2019s forms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-52027","artist_text","type-artist_text","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"spectra_custom_meta":{"_wpml_word_count":["{\"total\":0,\"to_translate\":{\"en\":2,\"pt-br\":2}}"],"_edit_lock":["1719946210:7"],"_edit_last":["7"],"_wpml_media_featured":["1"],"_wpml_media_duplicate":["1"],"_last_translation_edit_mode":["translation-editor"],"_uag_css_file_name":["uag-css-52027.css"],"_uag_page_assets":["a:9:{s:3:\"css\";s:263:\".uag-blocks-common-selector{z-index:var(--z-index-desktop) !important}@media (max-width: 976px){.uag-blocks-common-selector{z-index:var(--z-index-tablet) !important}}@media (max-width: 767px){.uag-blocks-common-selector{z-index:var(--z-index-mobile) !important}}\n\";s:2:\"js\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"current_block_list\";a:7:{i:0;s:11:\"core\/search\";i:1;s:10:\"core\/group\";i:2;s:12:\"core\/heading\";i:3;s:17:\"core\/latest-posts\";i:4;s:20:\"core\/latest-comments\";i:5;s:13:\"core\/archives\";i:6;s:15:\"core\/categories\";}s:8:\"uag_flag\";b:0;s:11:\"uag_version\";s:10:\"1776290303\";s:6:\"gfonts\";a:0:{}s:10:\"gfonts_url\";s:0:\"\";s:12:\"gfonts_files\";a:0:{}s:14:\"uag_faq_layout\";b:0;}"]},"uagb_featured_image_src":[],"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Iris de Souza","author_link":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/author\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Rodrigo Naves &nbsp; germana monte-m\u00f3r: percursos da imagina\u00e7\u00e3o. galeria esta\u00e7\u00e3o sp 2017 I The works of Germana Monte-M\u00f3r began to gain definition in the late 1980s, beginning of the 1990s. In addition to paintings and drawings made with asphalt, she also made photographs of great interest and tantalizing sculptures \u2013 for they were looking awkwardly&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist_text\/52027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist_text"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artist_text"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist_text\/52027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galerialeme.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}