Carmela Gross “HOOK” is both drawing and sculpture simultaneously. This apparent quick gesture took a series of artisanal and industrial procedures to be created. Its title, like its sharp edge, suggests perforation and, consequently, a certain degree of danger.
Douglas de Freitas points out in his text “Carmela Gross’ vast primer to face the world’ that Gross’s works “blurres boundaries between sketch, machine-made and handmade / city, crowd and individual, with its tools for questioning the established order, its imagistic assaults, and its weapons for facing the world and art”.
In 1989, Gross presented her works made in iron for the first time. Ana Maria Belluzo wrote at the time: “The figures that define Carmela’s visible universe appear at a time prior to the sign. As a form, they resist the automatisms and facilities of language and impose themselves as visual presences prior to any meaning.”

PERDIDAS are compositions formed from tree bark cast in aluminum. They are almost-forms, hinting at incompleteness. They are primitive masses, grouping together like residues from many tactile experiments. The compositions of PERDIDAS seek scale, rhythms, gaps, equivalences, and differences in constructing each group.

In 1992, Carmela Gross presented the solo show “Drawings” at MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo).
The exhibition brought together a set of works called “SOLO,” made with graphite and resin on handmade paper, with irregular edges. Later, Gross decided to fold some drawings in a regular way. This is how the work is presented today: as closed notes, condensed bodies of work, which reveal traces of their initial compositions.
Moreover, the reworking of the piece juxtaposes a formerly gestural and expressionist approach with one that is now characterized by geometric precision and restraint.

These mechanical artifacts were part of an installation at the Centro Cultural São Paulo in 1997, entitled Close the Door. They are 18 in all and were mounted side by side on the walls of a large room of about 200 square meters.

The pieces are constructed of cylindrical iron bars and are composed of two closely symmetrical and mirrored halves, which are hinged to the wall. Together, the two pieces form a schematic drawing in the space that resembles the structure of a chair; when rotated, the unit is undone and the metal rods can generate other shapes and meanings.

The hinge is a simple mechanism that allows you to easily revert a representation of power, such as a chair-shape, into an aggressive set of rebars.

These mechanical artifacts were part of an installation at the Centro Cultural São Paulo in 1997, entitled Close the Door. They are 18 in all and were mounted side by side on the walls of a large room of about 200 square meters.

The pieces are constructed of cylindrical iron bars and are composed of two closely symmetrical and mirrored halves, which are hinged to the wall. Together, the two pieces form a schematic drawing in the space that resembles the structure of a chair; when rotated, the unit is undone and the metal rods can generate other shapes and meanings.

The hinge is a simple mechanism that allows you to easily revert a representation of power, such as a chair-shape, into an aggressive set of rebars.

ESCADINHA [LITTLE LADDER] is part of Gross’s body of work that investigates ladders as simple machines that require effort from the body to “reach heights desired by the eye.” Ladders were born as instruments of war and, together with arrows and stones, took conflicts beyond the ground. This ambivalence between simple construction and complex uses is present in the organization of the materials that make up ESCADINHA: the bronze, which is heavier, is tied in a rudimentary way to the wooden piece, which struggles to support its pair.