Marina Caverzan, Eclipse 0, soulmates, 42 x 60 cm | 16.5 x 23.6 in
Polygons are flat, closed geometric figures formed by line segments, present in their different manifestations in the selection of works that make up the exhibition, and which are not necessarily the only points of interlocution between the works. In addition to form, the operations involved in the works presented by Carolina Martinez, Mano Penalva, Heleno Bernardi, Marina Caverzan, Julia da Mota and Renato Rios in Polygons, porticos, matter and desire do not only start from an analytical field in the use of geometry.
The desire, re-signification and re-contextualization of forms and materials, which are reconstructed through displacement, obsessive gesture and the word, permeated by mathematical and erotic mystery, take us back to the history of Brazilian and Latin American art. By employing geometry within constructivist thinking1, as Brazilian curator and art critic Frederico Morais states, there is a Latin American contribution to international constructive art, in a peculiar way “[…] not only the organic, vitalist, sensitive and ‘caliente’ character of our constructive production, and the minimalist, kinetic and plurisensory anticipations, but also the introduction of symbols and the link with our roots. […].”
These roots are the straw weaves of basketry, the zigzag of lines that the Karipuna use when talking about the teeth of an alligator, the signs that structure the symbolism of Afro-Brazilian religiosity, the blocks of color of the Whipala, the Nazca lines, the ornaments and patterns of native peoples used by apprentices in Baroque churches as resistance to the Spanish colonizers.
Mano Penalva, Unidade II, Série Módulo, 2018, Vinyl tarpaulin, acrylic blanket and eyelets, 126 X 126 cm | 49.6 x 49.6 in.
Geometry as intuition and observation of architectural fields and their voids and angles2; as karmic, spiritual and astronomical study3; as an element impregnated in patterns and weaves of materials made by human hands or on production lines and their symbolic studies4 and in the spelling of the alphabet and the word drowned in its own repetition5 are means of communication between a recent production with a trajectory and identity of a revisited practice, establishing dialogues with Latin American constructive production not only through the use of form, but also through the new meaning of the formal field, which already exists as philosophy, astronomy and phenomenon, before establishing itself as art. We see vividly in our current art, since we’re talking about research that began mostly in the last decade, that processes involving the reorganization (or attempt) of chaos, given our colonization (violent and confusing), are still latent in our present time (violent and confusing) and in a society, as Morais has already pointed out, “where everything remains to be done and built”, art acquires a sense of organizing reality, transforming and building a new society.
- Constructivist thinking emerged in the USSR around 1915, where distinctions between the arts had to be abolished, as they were a means of highlighting hierarchies between classes. This movement was not only aesthetic, but also political, with basic elements and languages such as painting and sculpture becoming constructions rather than representations, in line with political and revolutionary premises. ↩︎
- Julia da Mota; Estrutura Fundamental II; Carolina Martinez, série Perímetros. ↩︎
- Marina Caverzan, Eclipse; Renato Rios, Peregrino. ↩︎
- Mano Penalva, Módulos. ↩︎
- Heleno Bernardi, série Carimbos. ↩︎
