Ricardo Siri, Casulo 02, 2020, Shell sculpture and trumpet bell, 13 x 40 x 9 cm | 5.12 x 15.75 x 3.54 in.
Hélio Oiticica wanted the work of art to be born “only from a touch on matter”, from a breath that transforms it into expression: “an inner breath, of cosmic plenitude”.
The recent production of Ricardo Siri, an artist from Rio de Janeiro who is inaugurating his solo show Organismo on March 19 at Janaina Torres Galeria in São Paulo, manifests itself at the top of his lungs.
Matter and expression take on an unprecedented fullness in the artist’s work. The works in Organismo – sculptures, assemblages and a “habitable nest” made of tree branches, clay and sound – echo the gestures and records of Siri’s life and artistic work, in consonance and tension with the current moment in art and the world.
In Organismo, Siri synthesizes a unique trajectory in contemporary Brazilian art. A sound and visual artist whose work moves between sculpture, performance, installation, photography and video, his aesthetic production incorporates an award-winning performance in the musical world, with five CDs released and work with names such as Sivuca, Hermeto Pascoal and Roberto Menescal.
Starting from his habitat, a house/studio in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, Siri encounters his environment: foliage, instruments, chickens, bees, clay, noises, birds, the warehouse, the garden.
He perceives around him, beyond the matter, the “cosmic” connection with the universe and the urgency of now; and produces works such as War, a beehive/canvas in which the artist’s solder shapes a world map in burnt wax, creating an alert of revealing pertinence.
In Música Concreta, two halves of a trumpet are joined or separated by a concrete block. In Baroque Music, it is the clay that unites/divides the musical instrument. In both cases, the flow of sound interrupted by matter generates another, immaterial flow.
In Colmeia, it brings together trumpets and horns, which perform a symphony from silence and produce imagined timbres that hover in the air. Siri achieves the same effect, crossing the boundary between plastic and sound, in Casulo 2, a work made from a seashell (from which, like the Polynesians, he extracts sound in his performances) and the end of a trumpet.
Siri thus gives voice and power to materials such as clay, shells or beeswax which, not by chance, are records of the fracture, if not collapse, of today’s unsustainable development model.
Organismo presents a whole, made up of paradoxes and communicating opposites: sound and silence; home and universe; matter and manifesto; culture and nature; coziness and discomfort; the self and the other. Elements and experiences that are certainly faced with contemporary impasse and immobility, which Siri’s touch transforms into radical expressiveness.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
He was born in 1974 in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), where he lives and works. A percussionist by training, he graduated from the Los Angeles Music Academy in the United States and furthered his studies in Indian and African percussion at the Sangeet World Music School (Pasadena/CA). In 2011, he was invited by the London Olympic Committee to reside and produce work at the Olympic project – Rio London Occupation at the Battersea Art Center in London. In 2013, he was invited to an artist’s residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris (France).
He held the solo shows “Interfaces” (Galeria Portas Vilaseca, RJ 2019), “Habitáveis” (Centro Municipal Helio Oiticica, RJ, 2017), “Escalas Variáveis” (Galeria Mezanino, 2016), “Oroboro” (Espaço Movimento Contemporâneo Brasileiro, RJ) and “Distorções”, (Galeria Amarelo Negro, 2010). His group shows include “Canção Enigmática” (MAM, RJ, 2019), “Monument in miniatura” (New York, 2018), “Das Virgens em Cardumes e da Cor das Auras” (Museu Bispo do Rosário, RJ, 2016; ); “Je Ma pele Siri” (Casa França Brasil, RJ, 2014); ‘Paisagem Sonora’ (Casa Daros, RJ, 2014); ‘Liana Ampliathum’ (Parque Lage, RJ, 2014); ‘Blank Page’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2012). She has given sound performances at the “Nuit de la Philosophie” (UNESCO, Paris, 2018); Portikus (Frankfurt, 2013), NBK-Gallery (Berlin, 2013) and Marino Marini Museum (Florence, Italy, 2013), among others.
