Rosângela Rennó’s facade was based on her 2-year research into images of monuments erected (and/or destroyed…) in honor of Lenin – which resulted in the work Good Apples | Bad Apples, presented in her solo show MONUMENT-DOCUMENT | DOCUMENT-MONUMENT.
Rennó adapted one of these images to raise the silhouette of a monument to Lenin on the gallery’s facade, a monument that is already born as a shadow of itself.
In its eighth presentation, this mural piece on the façade of the gallery, examines the political developments of sexual and gender activism. Shapes of Freedom revisits the history of the pink triangle and other sexual diversity symbols. To highlight the importance of collective organizing to achieve social freedom. The mural is accompanied by a historical timeline listing important moments of LGBTQIA + history in Brazil and abroad, developed in collaboration with Guilherme Altmayer.
On the gallery’s facade, Lia Chaia proposes a performative installation with a bench installed under the word that gives the work its name. According to Chaia: “Estacionamente lends itself to decelerating the urban rhythm and to an interregnum”.
Fugues are polyphonic compositions, where one melody overlaps another. The fugues are structured by a main theme, the subject of the composition, with which subsequent “voices” establishes variations. In her series of paintings called Fugue (2019), Longo Bahia employs an Augmented Reality experiences where one painting leads to another through the use of an app that reveals covert images. In Ka’rãi, both the subject and the third voice of the series are present.
Fugue (Subject) presents itself as a red brushstroke that, through the app, is replaced by a video of actress Mayara Baptista screaming.
Download the ‘Fuga por Dora Longo Bahia’ app (IOS or Android) for the Augmented Reality experience.
Fernanda Roriz, Julie Uszkurat, Marina Secaf and Pedro Feris, who worked on the graphic design of the exhibition MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2019, also developed the facade of the exhibition.
For the group, the material absence of some symbols from the QWERTY keyboard projected on the facade, illustrates a kind of emptying or precariousness of meanings, while offering possibilities for disorderly constructions.
On his solo show Forget the crisis, go to work! Guilherme Peters reflected on the friction between the Three Powers of Brazil on the gallery’s façade. In Três Poderes [Three Powers] (2019), a drawing made with barbed wire superimposed three hollow and intersecting cubes.
Estrutura parasita [Parasite structure] overlaps 3 external supports for air conditioners. The frames are deteriorated and have lost their function.
Renato Maretti occupies the front of the gallery with a site-specific painting that turns the 20-meter window of Vermelho into a closed pantograph gate. Maretti often uses painting in his work to simulate situations related to the circulation of people in urban spaces, or to reproduce ordinary objects of everyday use, such as cleaning and office supplies, in order to pay attention to them. In Mal-estar [Malaise], the artist adds to the emulated gate real estate “for sale” signboards that play both with the transitoriness of exhibition spaces and with the very logic of the art market.
In O ar da graça [The air of grace], Leya Mira Brander reflects on the time she was away from Vermelho (she used to be a represented artist at the gallery and left for personal reasons) to register on its facade the popular Brazilian saying that celebrates her presence, at the same time that it marks her absence.
The expression “offer the air of their grace” is used to greet someone who appears after a long period of absence.