Page 120 - ARTE!Brasileiros #40

EXCLUSION, ART AND THE PLACE OF SPEECH ENGLISH VERSION

the search for making permanent everything that is fleeting; the copy, the image recorded-fished in the street as appropriation
suspension of time as an enigma; the submission of plurality of (between Duchamp and photography), whether in the choice
real to one unity, one concentration. “In a way,” he states, “these of reasons and situations, humor is a capital ingredient,
are metonymical arts by excellence. demystifying, flippant, even when the most sublime nature is
The book’s structure follows its theme: at the same time poetic and represented. This explains the tendency towards assemblages or
visual, continually feeds the intellect and imagination with sensitive visual prosthetics that are often found architectural objects,
quotes by masters such as Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz and Roland anonymous public works, such as the collection Buracos (2002),
Barthes, but also specific representatives of photography, such a caustic tribute to the lack of power as artistic collection, on view.
as Juan Fontcuberta and Horácio Fernández. Poems by Wallace
Stevens, Nicanor Parra and Ronald Polito, among many others FERNANDO LEMOS (Lisbon, 1926).
sprout up, illustrating ideas, underlining concepts, extending His photographic work, like painting and drawing, occupies the
suggestions. The pages are designed with lightness and a certain surrealist orbit in a confessional manner, through the multiple
imagetic narrative in mind, respecting the very nature of the essay. recognition of the value of dreams, the unconscious and the vigil
The author dives deep into his research; he penetrates the dark regard of things; in short, the real considered as enigma and
chamber of the beautiful mixing he proposes, extracting elegant image as revelation. This way, the search for the invisible is a task
definitions both regarding the evolution of photography and of of dis-concealment, the artist thinks, through automatic writing,
poetry over time, and its creative confluences in art, in fiction, in free association, “disambientation” (according to the term of
photo books, what he calls transverse photography, and so on. Annateresa Fabris). The latent strangeness, the speech of the
At the end, Montejo Navas selects some high-impact images and unknown, the pulse of a certain infinite permeate his images, in
comments them with wit and intelligence. Here are three examples: which the porosity of reality (unreal-real) or the dialog conscience-
unconscious gains an atmosphere of intimacy, of visual breathing,
ARTHUR OMAR (Poços de Caldas, MG). of contingency. Thus, it is about winning, conquering another
The artist’s work is plural, going beyond the concept of multimedia evidence of things: “Vision affords us the presence of life,” as claims
(he creates music, poetry, essay, drawing) and is expressed in Fernando Lemos himself. Or: “When we look at a photograph, we
examples of different nature inside photography and its porous awake something that was in solitude.” There is, therefore, a vital
coordinates with installations and works on film and video. But his background, an imagetic iceberg that photography brings to the
entire work reflects, above all, a Dionysian and reflexive interest surface; it gives another set of eyes to our blindness. Photographs-
in the nature of image, in the sensorial and cognitive dive of his mirages that name what is nameless, as does poetry with what
experience, like an abyssal adventure of language, a writing of signs is unspeakable-illegible. Photography as search, ample territory,
that builds a visual and cultural anthropology at the same time. openness, another religatio. I poet, work belonging to the intense
This explains the indissociable place also occupied by theory in photographic production of the period 1945–52, visual apex in
his work; in fact, his body of work never ceases to be an imagetic its multiple trajectory, together with the series Ex-fotos, 2014
essay: like an adventure of perception, of visualization that drags (already in a different register of plastic intervention), transmits
photography, in this case, to unknown territories, “a step inside the possibility of mental images, hidden symbols on view.
the image,” according to the artist’s own words. And like a certain
phenomenological operation, of opting to create-tune in-detect 1 | PHOTOGRAPHY & POETRY (ELECTIVE AFFINITIES) ADOLFO MONTEJO NAVAS UBU
an already sensed cosmology, a science of what can be sensed EDITORA, 224 PAGES
(pre-logos), translate a cosmovision, the multiple sides of what is
in both sides of the camera, not only what is right in front of the REVIEW VENICE BIENNALE | PAGES 90 TO 94
lens. This very same game of immersion almost amniotic fluid
is offered are apparitions, potencies of vision. If the symbolic VENICE BIENNIAL
of image offers results that deceive its static side, since what
another map of seeing, of looking beyond. If his work-titles function NOT AS BOLD
configurations continue in this lack of frontiers, so does surprise:
as visual manifests, to the baroque reverberation of matter-forms
is added a culturalist background that mates Greece, Vermeer, WITH 120 ARTISTS FROM ALL CONTINENTS, THE FRENCH CURATOR
Malevich, modern art and indigenous cosmology. Thus the chosen CHRISTINE MACEL BETS ON WORKS WITH MANUAL AND PERFORMATIVE
image, coming from a photo-graphic drift (result of the moment
of impression itself) of the book Viagem ao Afeganistão (2010), is PRACTICES DATING BACK TO THE 1970S
a face-landscape that manages to be the opposite, a landscape-
face: it proposes a childhood of the regard. BY FABIO CYPRIANO
MARCOS CHAVES (Rio de Janeiro, 1961). VIVA ARTE VIVA, the central exhibition of the 57th edition of
Most of this artist’s visual work modulates through a libertarian the Venice Biennale, is a politically correct exhibition to its core. It
use of photography that belongs to the new marriage put into gathers 120 artists from all continents, with important works, from
effect in the 1990s by art and photography, in spite of the prominent names such as Philippe Parreno, Olafur Eliasson, Ernesto
recognized emphasis this media historically possessed. Indeed, Neto and Gabriel Orozco, to young bets such as the 33-year-old
the visual treatment follows many directions: to record of parodic Chinese Guan Xiao and the 30-year-old Moroccan Achraf Toulob.
situations, to intervening photographs or to construct visual There are many artists who have never participated in the show,
architectures, whether of images or objects. Therefore, this is which makes the selection appear as a sort of attempt at correcting
about a photographic poetics that places itself at the image’s the historiography of art from Venice, for instance, by including
curb, in the symmetric dependence of the external, always the Dutch Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975), the Brazilian Paulo Bruscky
conceptualized as direct photography, and the later process, and the Chilean Juan Downey.
a visual post production, in which sometimes the word or the However, the result of the ensemble lacks power, possibly because
title appear as a dis-code. Whether in the explored side of the the show has a more museological temperature, which may be

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