Page 89 - ARTE!Brasileiros #46

Laudares (Brazil, Sé), Randolpho Lamonier (Brazil, Periscópio), Alejandra Pietro focusing on an economic-financial loss, when we know that art and culture do
(Chile, Die Ecke), Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (Chile, Bendana-Pinel) and Fernando not give profit anywhere. Document 14 had public record, with 1.230.000 visitors
Bryce (Peru, Espaivisor) . They are artists who, with very different ways of working, against 904.000 from the previous edition.
raise the questions she asked herself: “Timeless questions that are updated every But the essential point is that Germany has not bowed down to the unwise
time we see the exoticism demanded from outside for our territory”. politicians talks and, honoring the democratic tradition of the Documenta, invited
Whether in the recovery of “a religious memory and the mystical force of Afro- to join the selection team, eight internationally renowned experts, among them, the
Bahian culture” made by Heraclitus, in the reconstruction of history and in director of Tate Modern, Frances Morris; the South African curator Gabi Ngcobo;
reflection on it “from the record of what is necessary to keep within history and the director of Van Abbe Museum, Charles Esche, and the director of Pinacoteca
not forget” made by Pagatini or Centurión’s awareness of AIDS in a “personal de São Paulo, Jochen Volz. These four names point to the representativeness of
chronicle of his way to death” Solo sector is bringing countries closer to the the cultural diversity of the committee.
continent through common issues. “We chose ruangrupa thanks to the ability that the group has shown in call
In the Masters sector, former Repertório, the new curator, Tiago Mesquita, did not several communitie -, including public that go beyond traditional audiences of
seek a thematic or historical axis. The art critic says that the curatorial experience the artistic medium - , and promote local participation and commitment,” said
of an event like SP-Arte is still very new for him: “It’s very unusual in relation to the team, in a press release.
other works that I’ve curated”. This statement emphasizes two axes that deserve to be watched carefully and
Tiago chose to bring to the Masters works produced between the 50s and 80s, reflect some of the most important proposals of the current art system: to go
because they are works that “we can look at with a certain temporal distance” beyond “traditional audiences” and the involvement with the context.
to understand them and also to understand the production of their respective Ruangrupa himself, or Ruru, as it is known, made it clear in the text they released
authors. Carlos Fajardo (Marcelo Guarnieri), Ridyas (Central) and a project by after being appointed: “If Documenta was launched in 1955 to heal war wounds,
Rubens Gerchman (Surface), among others. why shouldn’t we focus Documenta 15 on today’s injuries, especially ones rooted
The biggest surprise is perhaps in the Performance sector. Marcos Gallon, who in colonialism, capitalism or patriarchal structures, and contrast them with
also organizes the VERBO art performance show, chose not to allocate a space partnership-based models that enable people to have a different view of the world. “
only for the works that will be presented. The performances took place in spaces In fact, “partnership-based models” is an essential expression to understanding
destined to them scattered among the exhibitors. Gallon’s idea is to encourage contemporary art, since its beginnings in the years 1960, but that often follow
the galleries to also take their performance artists, so the genre is incorporated being depreciated by archaic models that keeps the artist as author/criator of
as another possible medium of art, not marginalized in a closed corner. Also, an commercial object.
according to Gallon, the vast majority of art galleries in the state of São Paulo However, since Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, in Brazil, or Joseph Beuys, in Germany,
represent artists who work with performance. the idea of work was questioned, being replaced by other proposals aiming at
Gallon is also driven by the idea of encouraging collectors to buy performances, the expansion of what would be the place of art: be in the creation of the Free
make them look at it as something that can be sold through the galleries: “So International University, as defended Beuys, in a therapeutic environment, to
it’s brought to the trade show’s axis.” For this, SP-Arte will buy one of the works Clark, or a space for meeting, for Oiticica.
presented and donate to the collection of the São Paulo Pinacoteca. The work In a text from 2012 made to the 30th edition of the British magazine Afterall, the
will be chosen by the staff of the institution, led by Jochen Volz. The artists Cadu critic David Teh points out how ruangrupa “has done a deep commitment with
(Vermelho), Cristiano Lenhardt (Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel), Jorge Soledar (Portas Jakarta, both as a place and as subject, and to its population, both as public and
Vilaseca), Maria Noujaim (Jaqueline Martins Gallery) and Jaime Lauriano (Galeria as author. From day one, the group has made of the city — the noisy trade and
Leme/AD) will be in the sector. administration machine not considered source of culture — a primary protagonist
of an epic adventure of collective storytelling “.
In this sense, the idea of artist-proposer, defended both by Oiticica and Clark, is
ANALYSIS ART AND TENDENCIES | PAGES 36 TO 38 clear. According to Teh, in that article, “the prodigious capacity of the collective
FAR BEYOND ART reaches a diverse aesthetic, incorporating from the punk street culture to the
street culture, passing through desk research and ethnographic context, reaching
even procedural and conceptual experiments. To mix it up is a firm conviction
CHOICE OF INDONESIAN COLLECTIVE RUANGRUPA FOR ARTISTIC that the participants are agents in a social history alive “.
DIRECTION OF DOCUMENTA REINFORCES THE TREND OF PROPOSALS This proposal of consider the public as an agent, after all, is everything that
THAT GOES BEYOND SPACES SUCH AS MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES Beuys and Oiticica sought, in a program that advocated such a big expansion of
the artistic field so that there would be no more boundary between art and life.
BY FABIO CYPRIANO “The museum is the world”, advocated Oiticica. “Everyone is an artist”, preached
Beuys. Not by chance, was in Documenta 6, in 1982, that the German artist used
THE SELECTION OF THE COLLECTIVE RUANGRUPA (that’s right,using lower-case letter the exhibition as a space for the Free International University, and two years
initiating a proper noum and can be loosely translated from Indonesian as “a later held a series of postcards with provocative texts, among them the phrase
space for art “ ) for artistic direction of the Documenta 15, wich will be held in “With that I get out of Art”, making clear the institutional breakdown manifest
2022 in the city of Kassel, is a coherent decision and in tune with the current at the time of the so-called “return to painting”. A few months later, he would die.
state of contemporary art . For the past 50 years, many similar proposals were presented, as a French Nicolas
On the one hand the choice is amazing, seeing that the institution has suffered Bourriaud, who came to draw a somewhat Eurocentric theory, the “relational
attacks by local rulers, when the previous edition had a US$ 8.4 million deficit, aesthetics”, realizing a production that also use partnerships.
largely caused by sharing the shows with the city of Athens, reaching a total However, between recent and more radical proposals is the work of Cuban
budget US$ 50 million. Tania Bruguera, at Tate Modern, during her installation at the Turbine Hall,
Those were of political content attacks, typical of the current war strategy against between October 2018 to February of this year. Along with the occupation of the
the culture, also popular in Brazil, who ignored the essential points of the exhibition, monumental space, she was also responsible for the program Tate Exchange,

ARTE_46_Marco2019.indb 89 25/03/19 14:35