On the gallery’s façade, the architectural firm vão proposes an installation entitled dissociation. The idea is based on the displacement and partial burying of the street lamp that separates the public space, the patio in front of the gallery, from the private gallery space.

Gustavo Delonero, Anna Juni and Enk te Winkel, founders of vão, start from the observation of the lighting strategy developed by architects Paulo Mendes da Rocha and José Armenio de Brito Cruz for Vermelho’s patio as an element analogous to public lighting – that is, with unnoticed presence and expanded functionality. The gesture of the group gives the opposite treatment to the light pole. According to the architects of vão, the simple displacement and partial burying of the pole brings visibility and enhances the punctuality and definition of the light – originally intended to be general and homogeneous.

The installation X (2021) tensions the vertical and the horizontal axis, connecting the large rigid surface of the gallery with the floor. The idea of ​​joining these two axes is fundamental in Carmela’s work; and, especially in X, as we are not on the level of the visible, but on the level of participation that requires the physical presence of the observer as a condition.

In Res Verse, revealing his research around the performativities of mobility, the artist installs the object-synthesis of the beginnings of inter-continental displacements the gallery’s patio. Here, the two sails, in white and orange, are attached to a metal tube embedded in the reinforced concrete. Nonoperational, as if one were the negative for the other, they aim for the sea that exists in this city. In front of the sails, as if we were (aren’t we?) upwind – sailing against the wind – we can ask ourselves: how do we dance with the breeze and the color of the façade of this brutalist architecture framing the installation?

The title of the work, Res Verso, reveals a semantic game: a reference to the way of sailing against the wind, technically called “upwind”, whose 45-degree angle prevents uncontrolled drifting; the function of sharing the wind and, thus, the movement of the boat by the two sails, as if one were the negative of the other; and, finally, a reference to the Latin expression “res public”. Res verso, here, as the verse in public affairs – slightly metaphorical about our current state of affairs.