Vermelho presents, from September 18th to October 11th, 2007, the solo exhibitions Le désespoir du singe by Manuela Marques and Araucária Angustifólia by Gabriela Albergaria.
Although living in different cities, Marques (Paris) and Albergaria (Berlin and Lisbon) found ways to establish a dialogue between the two individuals they present in Vermelho, without, however, distorting their personal research. There was no established spatial division. There are works by Marques that appear alongside works by Albergaria and vice versa, establishing a dialogue between the photographs of the former and the installations of the latter.
Manuela Marques created the exhibition based on a single image, that of a monkey that the artist titled “Le désespoir du singe”. This is the name given, in colloquial French, to the araucaria (araucaria angustifolia). It is around the idea of portrait and landscape that the set of images presented in the individual exhibition is articulated.
Different from the series seen at the “Hora Aberta” exhibition in 2004, the artist’s first at Vermelho, when she presented large-scale photographs that addressed the idea of suspension, now the characters portrayed by Marques express withdrawal and concentration on themselves, evoking the centrifugal movement of the world. The photographs of landscapes (vegetables, water, land…), on the other hand, refer to an idea of expansion, contrary to the previous series, colonizing, with this movement, the entire photographic surface. Although polyphonic, the ten images that make up the exhibition create a dialogue between two antagonisms, that is, between movements of containment and expansion. The image that establishes the connecting link is that of a young man walking and blending into the plant world.
Using simple and, at times, extremely limited means, most of Marques’ works have the ability to reveal a powerful and restless presence, as if exaggeratedly internalized, without knowing, in the end, what they are truly about. However, there is always a subject no matter how intimate or imperceptible it may be. For Marques, it is not so much the restitution of a trace or the capture of reality that matters, a procedure latent in all photography. The artist deals with photography as being in the world in a collected, mute way, which does not reveal itself immediately, but which, however, does not ignore it, keeping it on the sidelines to reveal its essence.
Gabriela Albergaria, for this exhibition, used the Buçaco National Park, located in the center of Portugal, as one of the places researched as it was one of the first acclimatization sites for plants coming from the Portuguese colonies. There, the artist found the “Araucária Angustifólia”, a tree that inspired the creation of the polyptych that gives the exhibition its title, a pencil drawing composed of ten parts. The work on tropical flora developed by landscaper Burle Marx also influenced her research and appears materialized in the large installation that occupies, together with photographs and drawings, the ground floor of the gallery. In it, pieces of different trees, whether native to Brazil or not, are grafted, creating a single trunk measuring approximately 6 meters that occupies the space. The tree trunks used were pruned by the parks and gardens department of São Paulo City Hall and given to the artist.
Over the last few years, Albergaria has been developing research that uses the history of gardens as a starting point for interventions that unfold into photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations. In this sense, the colonization of plants in adverse territory, as a metaphor for an idea of social development and evolution, guided the artist’s investigations in the creation of the works that make up her first solo exhibition in Brazil.
Within Albergaria’s artistic trajectory, a particularly representative moment was the residency held in 2000 at the Kunstkerhaus Bethanien, in Berlin. There, the artist developed her first garden models created from memories of her childhood, which were intended to evoke in the observer a childlike perception of the landscape. Later, this idea was transformed and the configuration of the gardens became an instrument, a symptom of a certain way of observing the world. In his studies, Albergaria realized that, in Post-Renaissance Europe, the configuration of gardens reflected characteristics of rationalist thought. So, a way of being in the world.
Vermelho presents, from September 18th to October 11th, 2007, the solo exhibitions Le désespoir du singe by Manuela Marques and Araucária Angustifólia by Gabriela Albergaria.
Although living in different cities, Marques (Paris) and Albergaria (Berlin and Lisbon) found ways to establish a dialogue between the two individuals they present in Vermelho, without, however, distorting their personal research. There was no established spatial division. There are works by Marques that appear alongside works by Albergaria and vice versa, establishing a dialogue between the photographs of the former and the installations of the latter.
Manuela Marques created the exhibition based on a single image, that of a monkey that the artist titled “Le désespoir du singe”. This is the name given, in colloquial French, to the araucaria (araucaria angustifolia). It is around the idea of portrait and landscape that the set of images presented in the individual exhibition is articulated.
Different from the series seen at the “Hora Aberta” exhibition in 2004, the artist’s first at Vermelho, when she presented large-scale photographs that addressed the idea of suspension, now the characters portrayed by Marques express withdrawal and concentration on themselves, evoking the centrifugal movement of the world. The photographs of landscapes (vegetables, water, land…), on the other hand, refer to an idea of expansion, contrary to the previous series, colonizing, with this movement, the entire photographic surface. Although polyphonic, the ten images that make up the exhibition create a dialogue between two antagonisms, that is, between movements of containment and expansion. The image that establishes the connecting link is that of a young man walking and blending into the plant world.
Using simple and, at times, extremely limited means, most of Marques’ works have the ability to reveal a powerful and restless presence, as if exaggeratedly internalized, without knowing, in the end, what they are truly about. However, there is always a subject no matter how intimate or imperceptible it may be. For Marques, it is not so much the restitution of a trace or the capture of reality that matters, a procedure latent in all photography. The artist deals with photography as being in the world in a collected, mute way, which does not reveal itself immediately, but which, however, does not ignore it, keeping it on the sidelines to reveal its essence.
Gabriela Albergaria, for this exhibition, used the Buçaco National Park, located in the center of Portugal, as one of the places researched as it was one of the first acclimatization sites for plants coming from the Portuguese colonies. There, the artist found the “Araucária Angustifólia”, a tree that inspired the creation of the polyptych that gives the exhibition its title, a pencil drawing composed of ten parts. The work on tropical flora developed by landscaper Burle Marx also influenced her research and appears materialized in the large installation that occupies, together with photographs and drawings, the ground floor of the gallery. In it, pieces of different trees, whether native to Brazil or not, are grafted, creating a single trunk measuring approximately 6 meters that occupies the space. The tree trunks used were pruned by the parks and gardens department of São Paulo City Hall and given to the artist.
Over the last few years, Albergaria has been developing research that uses the history of gardens as a starting point for interventions that unfold into photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations. In this sense, the colonization of plants in adverse territory, as a metaphor for an idea of social development and evolution, guided the artist’s investigations in the creation of the works that make up her first solo exhibition in Brazil.
Within Albergaria’s artistic trajectory, a particularly representative moment was the residency held in 2000 at the Kunstkerhaus Bethanien, in Berlin. There, the artist developed her first garden models created from memories of her childhood, which were intended to evoke in the observer a childlike perception of the landscape. Later, this idea was transformed and the configuration of the gardens became an instrument, a symptom of a certain way of observing the world. In his studies, Albergaria realized that, in Post-Renaissance Europe, the configuration of gardens reflected characteristics of rationalist thought. So, a way of being in the world.