In architecture, the term As Built refers to a study of all measures and proportions existing in buildings, made after the construction of a project. In the piece by Nitsche, of the brothers João and Pedro Nitsche, the procedure carried out on the Vermelho’s façade highlights the drawing present in the construction of the gallery’s main building. In addition, their intervention opens the group show as a mirror of what will be inside the gallery: a study of relationships between works of different periods, made by different artists.

In architecture, the term As Built refers to a study of all measures and proportions existing in buildings, made after the construction of a project. In the piece by Nitsche, of the brothers João and Pedro Nitsche, the procedure carried out on the Vermelho’s façade highlights the drawing present in the construction of the gallery’s main building. In addition, their intervention opens the group show as a mirror of what will be inside the gallery: a study of relationships between works of different periods, made by different artists.

In “Four Words”, the five letters of the word GESTO (gesture in Portuguese) are repeated four times, with brushstrokes made by the artist on individual sheets of 100% cotton paper, using black Indian ink, and combined to form four versions of the same word, in a way that each word GESTO is composed by words written/ painted with gestures more or less diferente from each other, and form and content of the word/ painting relate to each other as well as deny each other, as each word GESTO is composed by and gives shape to different gestures and moments.
In this work, the action of writing/ painting shows the embodiment of language through the artist’s body, and brings to surface the performative aspect of Ianês work.

In Untitled, Edgard de Souza draws with his fingers over a velvet “skin”. The drawing formed is referential to that of another artist, José Leonilson (1957-1993), with whom de Souza has / had poetic and personal convergences. There is a triple contact in the work: that of the finger on the velvet, the one of the recreated drawing and the one of the memory.

In Circuito [Circuit], Lia Chaia elaborates routes and displacements on sheet of corrugated paper that seem to generate systems. The spontaneous drawings generate, from the fluidity of the pen that runs at times parallel and times cross the wrinkles of the paper, a finishing that seems to come from two essential operations of the drawing: the dot and the line.

In Circuito [Circuit], Lia Chaia elaborates routes and displacements on sheet of corrugated paper that seem to generate systems. The spontaneous drawings generate, from the fluidity of the pen that runs at times parallel and times cross the wrinkles of the paper, a finishing that seems to come from two essential operations of the drawing: the dot and the line.

Atlas is a titan in Greek mythology that sustains the heavens or the celestial sphere.
In the piece by Henrique Cesar, the acrylic resin dome is the structure that holds the lone star, made up of lightning rod tips, and carries in itself engraved representations of some of the operating laws of the universe.

In Airshaft, 3D environments display fictional ambience constructed so to comment on the utopian and mechanical life envisioned by modernism, revealing an abyssal lost world. In Airshaft reproduces a sense of a world that breathes restless and breaks itself constantly into a fragmented mirrored perspectives.

In the volatile series, iron bars are supported by nails that maintain thus its stability, and drawings are engraved on the wall with vertical and horizontal incisions forming a grid. The bars are horizontal, diagonal or curved and the drawings are placed where there are distortions in the bar. The iron rods, material commonly used to structure buildings, establishes a certain rigidity to the work. The work seeks to establish a tension between an invisible reality, control and possible distortions.

Edgard de Souza’s Rabiscos[Doodles]record the artist’s movements. They are drawings made during simple challenges: drawing while dancing, while talking on the phone, using two hands at the same time, using the pen until it runs out of ink, being symmetric, avoiding symmetry. Each of these tasks gives rise to a graphically or materially different drawing that is imposed on the paper in a different way. They are nevertheless struggles and analyses of his body, which seems to be present in each of them.

Edgard de Souza’s Rabiscos[Doodles]record the artist’s movements. They are drawings made during simple challenges: drawing while dancing, while talking on the phone, using two hands at the same time, using the pen until it runs out of ink, being symmetric, avoiding symmetry. Each of these tasks gives rise to a graphically or materially different drawing that is imposed on the paper in a different way. They are nevertheless struggles and analyses of his body, which seems to be present in each of them.

Frottage of shells found on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, on 19th century engraving.

Frottage of shells found on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, on 19th century engraving.

Semi-Breve [Semibreve] consists of a piece of obsidian cut into the form of a rectangular solid, positioned below and adjacent to a horizontal line of tensioned wire as in string instruments. The image reproduces the symbol of the same name used in musical scores, representing a long pause, equal to the length of a whole note.

This work examines the depiction of explosions in the Soviet War Memorial of Berlin’s Treptower Park, where concrete-cast reliefs narrate the history of WWII through allegorical scenes as abstract point, described by Zaccagnini as “spaces for the void of sense that characterizes this and other wars”. Through the process of frottage (rubbing a pencil over thin paper covering a textured surface), Zaccagnini reproduces and solidifies these shapeless images in an almost iconic synthesis. The work embodies the frustration inherent in any attempt to translate experience – a task that, as the influential postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak puts it, is “impossible but necessary”.

The works in this series examine different man-made interventions on Earth and their scales. These pieces were carried out from an immersion by Moscheta in the Atacama Desert, where the artist encountered tracks made by ancestral peoples. They are drawings that the artist see in the construction of these paths or in the manipulation of stone forms or in the construction of Apachetas – small piles of stones organized in a conical form as offerings made by the indigenous peoples of the Andes to Pachamama or to other entities.

Nicholas Robbio was inspired by the work of Austrian architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasse and his manifestos, which aimed at man and nature as a single body, to build xxx. Hundertwasse developed a theory, known as Five Skins. The first skin would be the epidermis; the second would be the clothing, as a social passport and as the first level of distinction of man in the world; the house acts as the third skin; the social and cultural environment act as the fourth skin and the fifth and final skin would be nature, the planet Earth. In Robbio’s work, the skins are seven: body, clothing, house, neighborhood, city, country and atmosphere.

During his residence in the Honda the artist collected small stones in the Magdalena River valley. Treated as a detailed geological study and based in the aesthetics of scientific illustration boards of the XVIII made by José Celestino Mutis in the same place, the title refers both to the rotational movement of the stones as to the history of the country, the scene of many wars and disputes since its colonization. The stones are the testimonies of this history shaped in themselves and in the brutal landscape that surrounds them since time immemorial.

During his residence in the Honda the artist collected small stones in the Magdalena River valley. Treated as a detailed geological study and based in the aesthetics of scientific illustration boards of the XVIII made by José Celestino Mutis in the same place, the title refers both to the rotational movement of the stones as to the history of the country, the scene of many wars and disputes since its colonization. The stones are the testimonies of this history shaped in themselves and in the brutal landscape that surrounds them since time immemorial.

During his residence in the Honda the artist collected small stones in the Magdalena River valley. Treated as a detailed geological study and based in the aesthetics of scientific illustration boards of the XVIII made by José Celestino Mutis in the same place, the title refers both to the rotational movement of the stones as to the history of the country, the scene of many wars and disputes since its colonization. The stones are the testimonies of this history shaped in themselves and in the brutal landscape that surrounds them since time immemorial.

The works from the Blocão (Big Bloc) series, were initially created in collaboration with art critic Gloria Ferreira and artist Juliana Ferreira and features a selection of polemic phrases said or published by politicians and media personalities.

The works from the Blocão (Big Bloc) series, were initially created in collaboration with art critic Gloria Ferreira and artist Juliana Ferreira and features a selection of polemic phrases said or published by politicians and media personalities.

The works from the Blocão (Big Bloc) series, were initially created in collaboration with art critic Gloria Ferreira and artist Juliana Ferreira and features a selection of polemic phrases said or published by politicians and media personalities.

In Between, Robbio explores a point of tension and balance between a reproduction of his own finger, cast in lead, and a line segment, produced in brass.

Tepmoah is part of a series of machines invented by Lia Chaia.
The acronym stands for Tempo Espacial Parada Movimento Organica Artificial Humana [Space Time Stopping Human Artificial Organ Movement].

Words, phrases and typographies of old advertisements are recovered by Marilá Dardot to compose a series of new artworks that the artist has entitled Novas Pinturas [2011–2012].
The artist removes these words from their original contexts and applies them on large panes of glass. Like showcases that announce the latest seasonal fad, they weave a commentary on the demands of the art system and consumer society.

Riverrun consists of 14 parts that constitute a long phrase, using two different alphabets. To the straightforward and legible type used in one of these alphabets, Mlászho overlays a second one created with archaic and “tormenting” types, difficult to read and understand. The title and construction of the piece refer to the opening of James Joyce’s Finnegans wake, where the author merges words and languages in search of new meanings.

Self-supporting, easy to carry and to assemble, ladders are simple machines. They (Un) make up the effort of the body to reach the heights desired by the gaze. At the rhythm of the steps, each step turns into lever to move the whole body, coordinating in the inclined plane the combined force of arms and legs.
Excerpt from ESCADAS – relato de uma montagem, by Carmela Gross

The set of frottages from the Secession series: The Tempest, is part of a project created for an artist book by Cinthia Marcelle, published in parallel with the solo show “Dust never sleeps”, by the artist in the Secession, in Vienna, in 2014. The images were made from folded sheets of paper, the same size of the publication pages, creating a kind of book within the book.
Composed of 21 chapters, the project builds a narrative of this gesture of folding paper. It is a relation between what is and what is not present, as frottage – or tracing – depends on a tangible referent.

In Transfusão [Transfusion], Chaia uses PVC pipes and cords of different tones of red to refer not only to a circuit of human veins, but also to architecture as something both alive and propositive.

In this series of paintings on cardboard are represented ships wrecks left in the territory once occupied by the Aral Sea, which has gradually shrunk since the 1960s, after Soviet irrigation projects diverted the rivers that feed it. Accompanying the images of the ships, are images of extinct or endangered fish.