Blocão [Giant stack] is a collaborative work with art critic Glória Ferreira and artist Juliana Franklin. The work is a selection of 80 controversial phrases uttered by politicians and media personalities printed on 30 thousand sheets of paper of approximately one square meter organized in a stack. The audience can choose a phrase to take with them.
For their solo show Histórias Frias e Chapa Quente [Cold stories and Hot Coals] the duo treated the gallery´s façade as a billboard coverd with the printed phrases.
On the gallery´s façade, Albergaria creates a grid of steel cables that employs the additive sequence created by Fibonacci. The Fibonacci sequence is intrinsically linked to nature. These numbers are easily found in the arrangement of leaves on the stems of plants, in tree crowns or even in the number of petals of some flowers. This sequence gives rise to the “golden rule” used by architects and artists to create so-called “correct” and harmonious proportions.
Iván Argote sculpted the phrase Let’s Write a History of Hopes on the gallery´s façade. The phrase also served as the title for the Colombian artist´s first solo exhibition in Brazil. It was a suggestive opening combining several of the ideas that permeated the show. Unlike previous projects presented on this 8 x 15m canvas which contains concepts and ideas from inumeros projects by other artists, Let’s Write a History of Hopes does the opposite of writing by subtracting layers from the façade to reveal the phrase laying bare vestiges of previous projects.
“How to make a crowd change the world, or at least part of its stories? What makes the crowd a flood that carries and drags everything, without measuring its own strength? What makes it an inescapable monster, capable of tormenting even the most unscrupulous tormentor? The masses are made up of hundreds, thousands or millions of individuals who, in general, do not pose any great danger to the system when isolated. However, for our benefit or our misfortune, each individual carries an important fragment of the monster’s DNA chain, which is lost or recovered at another point in the chain, perpetuating the monster´s dynamism, always maintaining it in its prime. Terrible and wonderful.” Rosângela Rennó
The Fraktur font appears in several of Ponto Final’s works in different contexts, such as those linked to the construction of the national identity of a people, group or ghetto, or as a form of exclusion and racism. On the gallery’s facade, the Tennenbaum typeface, which belongs to the Fraktur family, was used to rewrite the phrase “Ordem e Progresso” from the Brazilian flag.
Of all the elements that make up Ianês’ current research, revealed by the set of works that make up Ponto Final, the Fraktur typographic family, its current and historical use, constitutes one of the central elements in the exhibition. Fraktur fonts are the most important exponent of the group of so-called Gothic letters. In the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and especially in Germany, this typeface was a dominant expression until the mid-20th century. Today it continues to be used widely in tattoos, newspaper names, beverage logos, band identities and by goth groups.
In his solo show, “Neste Lugar”, Daniel Senise drilled a hole on the façade of Vermelho through which a reproduction of the entrance hall of the gallery could be seen, suggesting a metalinguistic game.
This visual trick resulted from the installation “Parede com 5 holes”, created by Senise for the project “Travessias 2 – Arte Contemporânea na Maré”, in the favela of Maré [RJ, 2013]. The reference to these great institutions is literal. The work was presented on a wall located at the entrance of the exhibition space, with five holes through which one could see the models identical to the rooms of museums, such as the Musée D’Orsay [Paris], the MoMA [New York], the National Gallery [London], and MAM RJ [Rio de Janeiro]. In the last hole, the observer visualized the space where he was. According to the artist, the work reveals something common these days, which is the replacement of the real presence resulting from the democratization of information.
Fogarasi’s work addresses themes such as architecture, economy of cities and culturalization of public spaces, (de)constructing the idea of the city in European countries through various procedures. His works combine different expectations and demands related to urban space, pointing to the artist’s commitment to the architecture of space.