Page 114 - ARTE!Brasileiros #43

WHAT UNITES US? ENGLISH VERSION
the Fund will give and not from the principal capital. This is a way of ensuring that structure, a ruin, “the amputated limb of a body that has never been avenged.
something I am building perpetuates. “ To this ruin she is adding several others, whether the city of Brasília “frozen and
A!B: When does the first exhibit officially open? immutable”, or the city of Havana by the works of Carlos Garaicoa in the 26th Biennial,
June 23, with the three-dimensional O Marcos Amaro collection: front, bottom, top, 2003, or even an intervention of Seth Wulsin in a building leaves Buenos Aires, arriving
bottom, sides. Volume, shape and color, at its headquarters, at the Marcos Amaro at the work of Ai Weiwei in documentary XII, Kassel, in 2007. These overlapping
Art Factory (FAMA), in Itu. stories, unlike many academic texts, do not aim at a synthesis, but are built in mosaic.
On that day, we will also inaugurate the Sala Almeida Junior, where we will show a With such strategy, Melendi ends up creating small inventories of themes relevant
work that we acquired from the painter José Ferraz de Almeida to artistic production such as the use of maps, not by chance the theme of the
Júnior, Brazilian plastic artist, born in Itu. The realistic painting The Rest of the Model first essay “From Adversity We Live or A Cartography Under Construction.” In
(or “the model”) is a realistic work, produced in Paris in 1822, even when the painter it, the teacher brings together from the iconic “Inverted Map” of South America,
studied in the city, sent by Don Pedro II. The painting has four versions, three of Joaquim Torres-Garcia’s 1946 drawing, to the unknown map of Marcel Duchamp,
which transit through private collections. One of them, the largest, is exhibited in the “Adieu à Florine”, 1918, when the father of conceptual art leaves New York to live
nineteenth century Brazilian art gallery of the MNBA, the National Museum of Fine in Buenos Aires. The big question mark over South America is a fun counterpoint
Arts in Rio de Janeiro, and was acquired by the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1882. to Torres-Garcia’s reversal.
Almeida Jr. was recognized on his return to Brazil as a portraitist of the figure of Thus, in each text, Melendi adds to the often brutal theme like the violence of the
the common man. military dictatorship, works, authors and cases that allow the reader to perceive
The exhibit expands beyond the boundaries of this space. The gardens of the factory how artists have been addressing essential issues such as memory, body, or files.
will be taken by large sculptures by artists Caciporé Torres, Emanoel Araújo, Gilberto It is an an essential book to understand contemporary art.
Salvador, José Resende, José Spaniol, Marcos Amaro, Mario Cravo, Mestre Didi,
Sergio Romagnolo. CRITIQUE DIAS & RIEDWEG | PAGE 96
The director of the gallery is Marlize Corsato, with long experience in the market WHEN PRODUCING NUDES WAS
A!B: Why decide to also have a gallery?
A gallery helps me as a collector to follow the market, to understand the partners. A PROFESSIONAL CRAFT
and Ricardo Resende is also his artistic director.
First, it is an investment. Even more at a time like this, full of uncertainties. But WITH AN EXHIBITION AT GALERIA VERMELHO, DIAS & RIEDWEG EXPLORE THE
even so, it is a way to foster the market, create new collectors, and also insert or
reinsert on the market some artists who are fundamental in the art history of our EROTIC UNIVERSE OF THE AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER CHARLES HOVLAND
country and have not acquired the necessary space. BY FABIO CYPRIANO
For example, Aguilar, whom I intend to invite to an exhibition in the gallery after SINCE 1993, Brazilian Mauricio Dias and Swiss Walter Riedweg form an artistic
having seen his last works and which seemed incredible to me. Using a rather strong duo, for which the idea of partnership is not realized only in working together, but

word, artists who were somehow marginalized. And also provoke new opportunities. especially in a type of work which also involves other people, groups or communities .
The idea is to promote contrasts, with artists such as Gilberto Salvador who has a It is as if the method used by Dias & Riedweg was expanded as a vital and viral
work even more forceful today than he did in the 60s, during the dictatorship, and necessity, always incorporating others beyond themselves, a practically unique
younger artists such as Mundano, who is originally a street artist with a political approach in the national visual arts scene, with so inflated selves. It was like that,
work . His work with scrap scavengers is excellent. I think it is important to create just to mention a case, with Os Raimundos, os Severinos, os Franciscos (1998),
a permanent experimentation. A laboratory. exhibited in the 24th São Paulo Biennial, which involved porters and caretakers
Marcos Amaro is very young, he is only 33 years old and he has already shown what from the northeast that lives in São Paulo.
has come. As he himself says, “I am a poet but I do not rip money.” They are never “participatory” nor illustrative pieces of the chosen theme, but a kind of
emotional approach, selecting times of these meetings and often formalizes in a staged
BOOKS MARIA ANGÉLICA MELENDI | PAGES 94 AND 95 way , close to the idea of a total work of art that welcomes the viewer into senses.

HOW TO APPROACH CHAOS In their most recent exhibition, CameraContato, which was shown in Galeria Vermeho
in April and May, Dias & Riedweg’s first work approaches another artist, the American
PROFESSOR AND RESEARCHER MARIA ANGELICA MELENDI LAUNCHES COLLECTION photographer Charles Hovland (1954).
THAT BRINGS TOGETHER ARTISTIC STRATEGIES OF THE LAST 50 YEARS Hovland’s work is surprising in itself. In an ad in The Village Voice, a newyorker
tabloid, he offered his services to photograph the sexual fantasies in the 1980s. For
BY FABIO CYPRIANO over 20 years, Hovland portrayed all kinds and youth depictions of sexuality and old,
THERE IS AN INTENSE DELICACY and great sensitivity in the texts of fat and thin, distinguished and strangers in his studio in Manhattan, gathering a file
Estratégias da Arte em uma Era de Catástrofes (Cobogó, R $ 56), launched at the of three thousand rolls of film BW, with the respective tests of contact.
beginning of the year by the argentinian based in Brazil Maria Angélica Melendi. Still in that period, he produced more than 450,000 cards photographing male nudes
The title, totally appropriate to the current situation in the country, actually refers to a for magazines, like Mandate and Honcho, under the pseudonym Chuck.This work
broader period, beginning in the 1960s, on behalf of Latin American dictatorships. She began after the invitation of one of his clients. In addition to being a photographer,
left Argentina in 1975, a year before the military intervention that took from President he is still an activist of movements and non-governmental organizations in the fight
Isabelita Peron, to live in Belo Horizonte, where she developed an academic career. against AIDS, such as ACT UP. He is an odd figure but now a forgotten protagonist.
Melendi is a retired professor at the Department of Fine Arts at the School of Fine It was from Hovland’s immense erotic images file, witness to a time of fantasy and
Arts of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She is the coordinator of the group desire previous to the facilities of digital cameras and nudes distributed in dating
of studies in contemporary art Strategies of Art in an Age of Catastrophe, which apps, that Dias & Riedweg created CameraContato.
gives name to the new book, started 20 years ago in the Guignard School, UEMG. At a time when art institutions are being persecuted because approaches queer
Between Guignard School and Federal University, Melendi exerted great influence themes and museums working with self-censorship to prevent attacks, the exhibition
in a generation of miners and miners in the arts that includes Julia Rebouças, was a necessary sigh in the face of the conservative wave that occurs in the country.
Cinthia Marcelle, Lais Myrrha, Sara Ramo, Marilá Dardot and Paulo Nazareth, The show was composed of two large installations, Arquivo Fantasia and Arquivo
among many others. romance and object subproducts - framed photos created from them.
The publication is a meeting of 19 essays, written from the 1990s, selected by the also In Arquivo Fantasia (2017) Hovland’s BW contact sheets were recreated in digital video
professor of the Federal of Minas Gerais, Eduardo Jesus, divided into five sessions: animations, presented in five vertical videos, with audio from the photographer’s
Strategies of Thought; Memory Policies; Files; Monuments; Memory Spaces. Most notes on his models read aloud by himself.
of them have been published in magazines and collections, especially foreign ones, Arquivo Romance (2018) projects fragments of naked bodies portrayed by Hovland
but some are unpublished. but seen by a kaleidoscope, thus fragmenting the erotic images, making them
The delicacy of the book is, first and foremost, in the respect with which Melendi sometimes visible, sometimes abstract. Also on display was the film Esperando um
deals with each work of art, which is not seen in many contemporary essayists who, modelo (Waiting for a Model), a very subjective documentary about Hovland in his
in the face of complex production, often prefer to ironise it. Another important studio, a rather surreal place full of small collections, from religious objects to dolls.
feature of the author’s work is the relation of the so-called visual arts to other Thus, in CameraContato, the pair presents clues to a complex story about a
cultural productions such as literature or architecture. photographer who portrayed the sexual fantasies of others when sex became
In the text Sobre as ruínas do futuro, for example, Melendi starts from a concrete synonymous of death by AIDS. Therefore, it is a show that, after all, also speaks of
structure in Germany, built in 1942, to test Berlin soil, transforming it into an abandoned partnerships, complicity and empathy, the central strategy of the work of the duo.