Vermelho presents the Danish group SUPERFLEX with the FREE BEER exhibition, a project that opens up the drink’s formula and addresses the economic strategies and dynamics that govern society. The name of the project, designed in collaboration with students at the University of Copenhagen, was taken from a phrase by Free Software guru, the American Richard Stallman, “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”, and is associated to the idea of free software as freedom of expression applied to a real product.
Galeria Vermelho presents, from 23 of October to 17 of November of 2007, the individual exhibition of Daniel Senise.
From the 123 artists that participated of the emblematic exhibition “Como vai você, geração 80?” (1984), at Lage Park, Rio de Janeiro, few are the ones that until today remain active and operating in the scene of contemporary art. Daniel Senise (1955), that participated of the exhibition together with Ana Maria Tavares, Beatriz Milhazes and Mônica Nador, is one of the artists that incorporated the transformations in the field of the art in the last decades, renewing techniques and methods, instruments of his painting, keeping it up to date and vigorous.
Since December of 2006, Daniel Senise is represented by galeria Vermelho. According to Gabriel Pérez-Mire, the works of Senise show a “great concern with the painting”. This affirmation regards the procedures and techniques used by the artist that frequently incorporates extracted elements of his atelier, in which floor Senise extends the canvas so that they accumulate dirt, dust and residues, that, later start to be part of the elaboration of the work.
To deal with the intermediate spaces that separate people, things and events, initial objective of Senise in the current selection of works, the artist has left of the tangible space that encircles him presenting uncertain architectures appropriated from desolate interiors of abandoned buildings. This can be seen in the piece “Soft and Hard” (2007), immense canvas of 250 x 465cm, that occupies part of the ground floor of the gallery. In the work, Senise creates a fictitious space that not only has the architecture as reference but that also removes of it part of the elements that start to constitute the materiality of the piece. Besides “Soft and Hard”, Senise is also presenting three other pieces of the same series, “Ici et Ailleurs”, “Pavda” and “Numero Deux”, “Comício…” watercolor composed of 1.172 parts, and three collages, all of them produced in 2007.
According to the Portuguese historian Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, the procedures used by Senise in his works provoke in the observer a vertigo of the visible causing the sensation of have fond a little later, or still, before the true event. In this direction, the paintings of Senise configure fields that constitute small revelations that connect two distinct realities. For Almeida, an event is the coincidence of a time with a space, the painting of Daniel Senise are no-events, as a subtle imperceptible gesture that threat the order of the visible.
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 August 14th to September 6th, 2007, the exhibition Quando ramos são subtraídos [When branches are subtracted] by André Komatsu.
In Quando ramos são subtraídos [When branches are subtracted], André Komatsu proposes, based on “Marco 1”, a lighthouse-shaped installation in the central space of the gallery’s ground floor, an archaeological review of the concepts that, since the 60s, have permeated the processes of artistic creation and its products. Installation originally presented in 2006, at the Bolsa Pampulha Project at the Pampulha Art Museum, in Belo Horizonte (MG), “Marco 1” creates a pulsating valve in the exhibition space and alludes to the idea of containment and expansion that guides the exhibition as a all. Like a lighthouse that guides vessels, the light emitted by the installation, a rotating high-pressure mercury lamp, establishes a rhythm that leaks into spaces not previously determined by the artist, and suggests one of the layers of interpretation in Quando ramos são subtraídos [When branches are subtracted]. Projecting light and creating shadows, it points to history and reveals the materiality of the objects that occupy the white cube, such as the remains of demolished walls, bricks and cement blocks that make up the series “Informe Publicitário” (2006). Over this waste, the artist writes words like “finished”, “new” or “fine” (see images in the attached PDF). In the work, Komatsu uses the idea of the ready-made but returns the object to its materiality and original history. The meaning of the words in Portuguese points to the current fetishization of the artistic object.
Vermelho presents, from August 14th to September 6th, 2007, the exhibition 30 M by Rogério Canella.
In 30 M Rogério Canella presents 11 images from his series of photographs Linha 4, titled after the new São Paulo subway line, which will connect Estação da Luz to Vila Sônia, in the southwest region of the city, and whose route, according to the Company of the São Paulo Metropolitan (Metro), it will all be done underground.
To create the images, mostly large formats, Canella visited more than twelve construction sites (stations and ventilation tunnels), located under major avenues in the city of São Paulo. The artist focused only on the first of the three stages that, according to Metrô, divide the work of these large constructions. There, the soil is prepared and structures are created for the entry of SHIELD, an excavator that drills into the earth and creates tunnels that connect one station to another. As in previous series, Canella photographs these spaces in transition, devoid of human presence. In the case of Line 4, the artist reveals by looking at the gigantic transformation the city is undergoing, but which, as it occurs underground, escapes vision.
The Communism of Forms: Sound + Image + Time – The Strategy of Music Videos proposes an investigation of the possibilities presented by the music video format. It is not an exhibition of music videos, but of an attempt to discuss the possibilities and the presence of the music video language in the contemporary artistic production. The curators are Fernando Oliva and Marcelo Rezende. The opening will take place on July 20th at 8:00 PM (with the release of the book Comunismo da Forma – Som, Imagem e Política da Arte). The exhibition will be at Galeria Vermelho, until August 4th.
The artists were invited to appropriate the music video language, establishing a creative relation with its three main elements: image, sound (music) and time (duration). According to the curators, there is a possibility to build a dialogue between the spectators’ mental, cultural memory and the emotional repertoires. “This is no longer about fostering a theoretical or curatorial speech about music videos as artistic expression. Music videos are now a real form of expression within the industry, bearing much in common with the early days of cinema”, they write in the text of the project. “As the ‘bastard’ child of television and cinema, music videos have become more than just a genre. As a result of the speed with which they are produced and shown, they have come to be inhabited by artists capable of overcoming the limitations of the media. Music videos – with their lack of hierarchy between old and new, technological and hand-made – set in motion the whole repertoire of the world.”
The exhibition gathers a series of new works, produced specially for the project, at the curators´ request. The majority of these works were never shown in Brazil, it is the case of the new production of the Slovenians of Laibach, the Mexican group Nuevos Ricos, the English duo Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; and the work in video of the Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The exhibition brings yet a series of videos from Pipilotti Rist, a pioneer artist who turned to music video format when MTV started in the USA, in the early 80´s. In total, the exhibition shelters creations of about 40 artists, among Brazilians and foreigners. Ricardo Carioba, Rodrigo Matheus, Sara Ramo, Naiah Mendonça and Tetine have also produced recent videos (see full list below).
Complementing the exhibition, the book Comunismo da Forma – Som, Imagem e Política da Arte will be released through the Situações collection (Alameda Editorial), organized by the curators. The volume is not a catalogue, but a publication which debates the themes and questions raised by the project, through essays and interviews, texts which reflect on the power of the image empire when it teams up with a not-always-disposable song to create a commentary on politics and society. Among the authors that participate are Anselm Jappe (Italian philosopher, author of L’avant-garde inacceptable : Réflexions sur Guy Debord), Nicolas Bourriad (French critic and curator, author of Relacional and Post-Production), Charity Scribner (author of Requiem for Communism), Alexei Monroe (leader of the Slovenian group NSK and author of Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK), Earl Miller (Canadian curator) and the curators Marcelo Rezende and Fernando Oliva (with articles and a recent interview with Nicolas Bourriaud, taken place in São Paulo).
Vermelho presents, from the 1st to the 30th of June, the exhibition Matiz vertical [Vertical hue], a solo exhibition by Tiago Judas.
In Matiz vertical [Vertical hue], the installation that gives the exhibition its title, Tiago Judas, 28, establishes a relationship between concretism, a movement that emerged in the 50s, which was based on geometric abstractionism, and the fragility of his own body. The installation is composed of a wooden relief that presents characteristics taken from concretism, in green and red colors, and a video, with the same dimensions, in which the artist redefines, with his body, designs in space that refer to shapes geometric, and at the same time, subvert them.
In “Painéis de Comando”, the artist creates two wooden contraptions that resemble B-movie sets and industrial design. In “Caminho Interno”, two sculptures, in the shape of sneakers, confuse the passage at the gallery entrance and point to internal movements that do not presuppose displacement. In addition, Judas also presents, “INFINITO-D”, a comic consisting of 10 drawings where the main character, Zé, the carpenter, goes in search of the perfect chair and, consequently, his place in the world. There is also “Sangue e Chlorofila”, a series of four watercolors, and “kipá”, a series of 5 sketches transformed into silkscreens. In them, Judas puts his perception of mental space on paper. The title of the series refers only to the cap’s support point on the head. In addition to these works, Tiago Judas presents, at the opening of the exhibition, the performance “FUGA COMPLEMENTAR”.
The series of works that make up Matiz vertical [Vertical hue], all created in 2007, reveal the personal trajectory of Tiago Judas, who appropriates elements taken from the history of art and mixes them with the culture of comics and fantastic realism
Vermelho presents, from April 28th to May 26th, Pause, a solo exhibition by Chiara Banfi.
Pause presents a series of 11 new works, in addition to the installation NEVE, CAMPO, LAGOA, RIO and DELTA are some of the titles of the new series of works created in marquetry. In them, Banfi continues his research with organic forms, this time using different types of wood and lacquer.
Galeria Vermelho and Goethe-Institut São Paulo, present, from 3 to 21 April, the individual exhibition of the artist Julian Rosefeldt.
Rosefeldt, that participated of 26ª Biennial of São Paulo, in 2004, presents “Asylum” (2001/02), film-installation that approaches the subject of illegal immigration in the reunified Germany. Composed of nine films of varied durations, shot in 16 mm (five of them will be presented at Galeria Vermelho), “Asylum” counts with 120 guests that Rosefeldt met in asylums for foreigners, bars and institutions in Germany. According to the artist, “Asylum” intends to confront the observer with his/her ideals of world, questioning on one hand the idea of “Stranger”, and, on another, the nonsense of the daily behaviors, ritualized suggesting the illusion of individuality. In the installation nothing happens by chance. The movement of the “actors” was completely choreographed and appears in the repetitive, monotonous and endless displacement of the actors and of the camera. As Sísifo, the protagonists of “Asylum” are submitted to the nonsense, repeating, indefinitely, meaningless activities impersonating the battle of humanity in search of a sense for life.
Besides “Asylum“, Rosefeldt also presents the video monochannel “Lonely Planet“, created in 2006.
Galeria Vermelho presents, from February 26th to March 24th, the exhibition Ano Zero [Year Zero], by Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain.
On their first individual exhibition at the gallery, the couple of Brazilians that lives in Paris, presents a series of new works. The question of time appears in the video Ano Zero [Year Zero], created in 2006, that names the exhibition.
The language, recurrent subject on the work of Detanico and Lain, is revisited on the series of 288 images created with names of stars, such as, Alpheratz and Marphak. The series incorporates the typographical font “Helvetica Concentrated”, work created in 2004 in collaboration with the artist Jiri Skala. The letters of the typography, variation of the Swiss source, concentrate the surface of the characters of Helvetica in layers of different sizes. Overlapped and applied in transparency, the letters compose images with different gradations of light according to the names the stars. On the exhibition, 15 images of stars will be presented, such as, Polaris, Adhil and Ankaa, besides the ones already mentioned.
Currently known as the inventor of the telegraph and the code that takes his name, Samuel Morse was, at his time, a recognized painter. Between 1831 and 1833, the artist created the paint “Gallery of the Louvre”, his last attempt to create a great work of art. Detanico and Lain return to the piece on the video installation “Broken Morse”, of 2006. From a digital image of “Gallery of the Louvre”, 256 colors were separated and resubmitted individually in an abstract sequence of images. The artists also present the animation “The Waves”, from 2005
Vermelho presents, from January 11 to February 10, 2007, the exhibitions Quase como ontem, by Nicolás Robbio, and the individual of Rachel Poignant. Façade “Apropri_Ação7” by Rodolpho Parigi.
By means of lines, clippings, rabbets and overlappings, the artist Nicolas Robbio searches new meanings for common objects of the daily life. Rearranging structures, Robbio establishes relations with urban-industrials systems which characterize his efforts to face the questions of the Art. In the exhibition Quase como ontem, the artist strengthens positions that already appeared in “MAIO”, first individual of the artist at galeria Vermelho, in 2005, as well as in “the good intentions are not always the best ones”, of 2006, project presented inside of the exhibitions of “Rumos Visual Arts 2005/2006”, from Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo, Brazil, that prized the artist with an artistic residence in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, in Berlin, in 2007.
On the first floor of the gallery, Robbio presents sequences of drawings in general formed for single threads, schematically overlapping, transparencies and clippings of objects that contain or are contained in ampler systems. Either for the accumulation of transparencies or the subtraction of parts, the drawings of Robbio are simple and synthetic; its complexity are on his attempt to construct more with less, carrying through the transference of the object system of the sensible world to the language of the art.