Skip to content
pt
Home
Reading time 2 min

2013 Mercosul Biennial

Luiza Verdolin

The 2013 Mercosul Biennial was amazing! Warm Porto Alegre lived up to the event’s 9th edition title: Weather Permitting. If the title is seen as a question, the answer is yes. Seen as a statement, it was as coherent as possible. And, yet, seen as a condition, it justifies the incredible resulting experience. Going through the museums, institutions and spaces sheltering artworks and where performances took place, the thin line between art and nature was reinforced, delightfully confusing us as to where one starts and the other one ends.  The confluence of materials, methods, myths and rituals confirmed the promise of an environment intended to make you face natural resources in a new light, speculating about the bases that mark distinctions between discovery and invention.

 

 

Here I share one of the treasures of the Mercosul Biennial, for those who haven´t been able to experience it: Tradução da resina. Resins are secretions produced by plants, which have specific purposes and contents. They became potential materials used in the production of several consumption goods such as waxes and latex. Lucy Skaer used resin as raw material for 25-kilo precious stones. Celulose Irani factory produced the work by extracting resin from pine. The piece subverts industrial and cultural production logic. In this context, as it happens in many other works in the 9th Mercosul Biennial, Skaer’s work explains how art poetically and excitingly “re”forms what nature produces.

Reading time 3 min

Risk and poetry

Rodrigo Moura

The arrival of Luiz Zerbini’s paintings at Inhotim, which happened at the same time the Juan Araujo room was opened, together with an exhibit on still life, show the desire to show and talk about painting.  Since the Adriana Varejão pavilion was opened back in 2008, painting hasn´t been in the foreground in our exhibits as much as it is now.  With intricate compositions and complex cultural references, Zerbini’s figurative works could be considered the focal point of his presentation at Galeria Praça, a reinvention of narrative painting – I think of the line that goes through Renaissance religious painting to the Brazilian historical painting of the 19th century.

 

The relationship with nature, which is understood as the construction of man, becomes especially relevant at Inhotim, where the boundaries between what is cultivated and what is natural are always present.  In Mamão Manilha (2012), a papaya tree resists at a construction site that includes a painting by Hélio Oiticica.  In Mar do Japão (2010), it is the opposite:  human traces remain in an entropic seascape. The geometric paintings and sculpture-collages that complete the room show the artist’s restlessness during the last ten years of his production.  Due to his solar tropical and exuberant painting, at the same time Zerbini is a legend among Brazilian painters from the 1980s, he gathers 30 years of art showing that there is no poetry without risk.

 

Obras de Luiz Zerbini na Galeria praça. Foto: Ricardo Mallaco
Luiz Zerbini’s works can be seen on the Galeria Praça. Photo: Ricardo Mallaco

 

Reading time 3 min

Sharing Art

Redação Inhotim

Inhotim has just joined Google Art Project’s online collection. From now on, people all over the world can walk through the Institute’s gardens and visit the galleries and outdoor artworks. Although nothing replaces an on-site visit to the park, surfing through the collection, wandering around different routes with Google Street View, exploring over 90 works created by names such as Miguel Rio Branco, Tunga and Carlos Garaicoa is undoubtedly stimulating. In addition, it is an important step towards democratizing access to art.

 

Besides high resolution images and texts about the works, the virtual tour holds a surprise for users. The work Celacanto Provoca Maremoto, by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão, can be explored in details never seen before, since the image is available in gigapixel format, that is, one billion pixels. And it gets more beautiful every time you zoom in. 

 

  

Google Art Project Inhotim

Celacanto Provoca Maremoto, by Adriana Varejão, is available in gigapixel format.  

 

Overall, Google Art Project provides works from 315 cultural institutions from various countries around the world, eight of which are from Brazil. The collection numbers more than 6 million online items. Don’t waste any more time: visit Google Cultural Institute’s website and explore the project. Take the opportunity to choose the route of your next visit to Inhotim. 

 

Reading time 3 min

Creative Obsession

Redação Inhotim

Yayoi Kusama was still a child when she experienced her first hallucinations. The Japanese girl’s mind was then, inhabited by dots, balls and phallic shapes, which led to a compulsive disorder diagnosis. Aged eleven, the girl found a way to deal with her condition in using creativity. Currently, at the age of 84, still seeing the same shapes, she carries on working. The circular patterns, which have become a trademark for the artist, who is among Inhotim’s collection can be seen until January of 2014 in the works being displayed at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil do Rio de Janeiro.

 

Infinite Obsession features paintings, installations, videos, sculptures and other works, comprising Kusama’s first solo exhibition in Brazil. The CCBB visitor is invited to appreciate various artworks, such as Infinity Mirror Room — Phalli’s Field (1965), Fireflies on the Water (2012).  and Obliteration Room. The latter work is an interactive installation which was first conceived for the QueenslandArtGallery in 2002

and invites the audience to share the artist ‘s obsession by pasting colored polka-dot stickers on a white room’s wall (see TateShots’ flabbergasting final result of the installation in London)

 

Evocando o mito de Narciso, no Inhotim o visitante é convidado a apreciar sua própria imagem em um das 500 esferas de aço que flutuam sobre um espelho d’água. / Foto: Daniela Paoliello.

The myth of Narcissus: Inhotim’s visitors are encouraged to appreciate their own reflection in one of the 500 steel balls floating on the water mirror. Photo: Daniela Paoliello.

 

If you have been to Inhotim before, you are probably acquainted with the Narcissus garden Inhotim (2009). It is a version of a former artwork set up for the 33rd Venice Biennale. At the time, Yayoi Kusama surreptitiously spread 1,500 mirrored balls on the official pavilions’ lawn. While wandering about, the visitor would then pass by the installation and see the sign she had placed between the spheres, which read: “Your narcissism for sale.” The price?  $2 a piece. The artist was removed from the festival, where she would only set foot again 27 years later, now as a guest.

 

Reading time 3 min

Disputing space

Redação Inhotim

 Concrete, iron, glass and wood. Those are some of the materials which artist Marcius Galan uses for his works, a genuine challenge to perception. Indianopolis-born, the American, who was brought up São Paulo, attended the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation (Faap), a nationwide renowned institution which is a reference for plastic arts. Galan has been influenced by a vast number of artists, amongst which the Brazilians Waltercio Caldas and Cildo Meireles, as well as the American Gordon Matta-Clark, are entitled to a special highlight.

 

Pondering on the concepts of movement, precision and balance, Marcius believes that illusion and reality walk side-by-side. “Many of my works might as well be faced as mathematical experiences. A line, for instance, has an apparent beginning and  end, but, at the same time, contains an infinite number of points.  The transgression of this notion of space is a fascinating thing. It is proof that we seek for measures and patterns in things which, in their essence, cannot be defined “, he says.

 

At Inhotim, the artist has two works being exhibited. The first one, Seção Diagonal (2008), has been on display in Galeria Mata since 2010. Discovery and enchantment are amongst the feelings experienced by viewers when face-to-face with the presence of something that, in fact, does not exist. Finally, as part of the latest 2013 openings, the artist has set up his second work: Imóvel/Instável (2011). The art work, exhibited at Galeria Praça (the square gallery) plays around with notions of static mobility, evoking a of false movement idea. “The limit to space is variable and relative. What seems unbalanced can be in perfect balance provided it is analyzed all in all, “says Marcius Galan.

 

Marcius Galan explains his latest work at the Inhotim: Imóvel/Instável. Check out the video: