Page 96 - ARTE!Brasileiros #46

THE PLACE OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
and new sensory associations. These compromises with color and perception, wants to rest a little and think of other things: “Obviously you do not forget in
the recontextualization of usual forms, become a way of encouraging new and your memory what you did previously, because everything is inside you. The artist
challenging ways of seeing objects approaching other challenges. is a product of various stratifications of culture. Then you do not escape of the
The artist, of French mother and American father, has work both in collections thick memory, within you and within all that has already been done”.
of museums in the United States and France. His works can be found in the For a brief distance that allows her new perspectives, the artist has thought of not
permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Whitney doing more retrospective exhibitions for some time. In addition, she plans to keep a
Museum of Art, N.Y; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Yale University Art regular distance between individual exhibitions she does in galleries that represent
Gallery, New Haven, CT; at the Fonds National D ‘Art Contemporain, Paris, France; her: “I want to have fun experimenting: seeing what this new Anna is at 76”.
at the Jumex Foundation, Mexico.
This is Dean’s third exhibition in Brazil, where he leaves open a productive field,
with address to exhibit and constant followers. SEMINAR ARTIST_ANDRÉ KOMATSU | PAGES 76 AND 77
STIRRING STRUCTURES

ARTIST ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO | PAGES 74 AND 75
THE ALPHABET OF QUESTIONER, ANDRÉ KOMATSU POSITIONS HIS WORK IN A POWERFUL
WAY ON QUESTIONS OF THE SYSTEM
AN ALCHEMIST
BY JAMYLE RKAIN
AT 76, ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO WANTS TO TAKE A MOMENT TO HAVE
FUN EXPERIENCIG NEW THINGS AT THE AGE OF 40, the artist André Komatsu collects a series of important exhibitions
in his curriculum, having participated in the Brazilian delegation at the Venice
BY JAMYLE RKAIN Biennale in 2015 and two Mercosur Biennials followed in 2009 and 2011. The
artist divides a space with a friend in Belem, at the beginning of the East Zone.
“I ALWAYS REFERRED TO MY LANGUAGE as ‘my alphabet’”, says Anna Maria Maiolino, The 400m2 shed is basically used for ideas to take shape, ideas that pop up
76 years old, during a conversation at the Luisa Strina Gallery, where she had anywhere, whether in a hotel room or even during an exchange with the public.
an exhibition until March 23. The artist has just inaugurated a show at the Komatsu is a questioning artist, and he is not afraid of it. Its anti-system (or even
Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, in Milan. In September, Anna will present plural) positioning is an important factor in its work from the outset: “We need
a large exhibition at Whitechapell Gallery in London, organized in partnership to understand that the social structure has never been altered. Understand that
with the Italian institution. Recently the artist presented a show at MOCA, The what we live today, for example, this ultraliberal uprising, is a development of
Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles. mercantilism, of the bourgeoisie, when they began to understand that the state
It is a busy year for the artist, who says she is reading the book My Alphabet, by could be a vehicle for accumulation of capital”, comments the artist.
the Bulgarian philosopher Julia Kristeva. A friend told her about this book in the He came from a group that did a lot of performance early in the career, between
late 1990s, but only now Anna has been able to enjoy the pages. “I really like to 1999 and 2000: “It used to be a lot more visceral than I was from a group that
read philosophy, because it’s a form of feeding the imagination. In this case, my grew up at a time when the art market was not as big as it was now. it was a group
imagination”, she declares. Surrounded by lines and dots, striking signs in her of artists who had no money”, he says. Since then, he has worked with various
work, a passage from the book echoes: “Printed in me, the alphabet triumphs; modalities, from engraving to performance to installation: “At that time, you would
everything around me is an alphabet”. turn around with anything, material I would pick up on the street, or perform
Lines and dots, whether in ink, pen or structural cement; the eggs in the because I did not have to spend money ...”. Until he really started making a living
performance Entrevidas or in the strip of cloth that covers the body in In ATTO, from his creations, Komatsu worked as a private driver, teacher and bartender.
are elements that represent, for her, “the first breath of the idea that connects Voluntary servitude, labor relations, the systematization of actions, the
the work with the world”, especially when in drawing, what she calls “the first objectification of the subject are some of the points that André works as an
manifestation of Anna”. It is a type of alphabet that does not need the code in artist, posing as a thinker who investigates ethics, politics and society. He often
word, it is an post-word, something that comes before the word. uses reflections on architecture and civil construction to talk about it, for example
It is always important to point out the migratory issues in the life of the artist in works such as the Perishable Reality series, in which he presents texts written
and to realize how important the elements of her work were important for her on thin canvases made of concrete that simulate a type of curtain. So fragile that
communication with the other, given that for some time she felt the need to they are undoing over time and handling, disintegrating terms like “progress,”
belong to a place, and language is part of this. After all, Anna left Calabria for “the new world” and even the phrase “today as yesterday”, taken from a Nazi
Venezuela and then for Brazil, but also lived in other places over the years, as in newspaper. The structural and the crumbling of the structure appear as analogies,
Argentina and the United States. Despite the differences in idioms, her language since he admits: “I believe that things only change with the breaking of structures”.
in art has been and is universal. So is ‘her alphabet’. Another series linked to words, more specifically to communication, recently shown
At another point in Kristeva’s book, the author reflects: “The alphabet revived in in the individual exhibition Estrela Escura, in the Vermelho Gallery, Social Agreement
me, for me, that I could be all letters”. Identifying her language as her alphabet, shows newspapers collected from several countries whose “names establish a slogan”,
it is certain that the letters that make up the abecedary of Maiolino today are independent of the editorial line: The World, the Republic, the Manifesto. Komatsu
intrinsic to her, who never bothered to remain static and had no fear, for example, covers the newspaper with lead plates, leaving only the name visible: “I isolate the
to depart from figuration. The art process, for her, has always been something to information, making a relation with the reflection of today, where the information
build and deconstruct, which she calls, in an interview for the book Anna Maria is there but is veiled, which are the truths that end up directing the public.”
Maiolino (Cosac Naify, 2012), “an active state of transformative meditation.” The discussions that the artist seeks to bring are closely linked to his theoretical
It is in this way that the alphabet of Maiolino becomes plural and infinite, in the basis. “I rarely read things about art”, he says, fearing that readings about art
measure that still wants to develop and explore ways. To keep doing this, she will reduce everything to a microcosm. : “I try to understand something else,

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