Vermelho presents, from October 3rd to 11th, 2008, É claro que você sabe do que estou falando? [Of course you know what I’m talking about?], collective exhibition curated by Luisa Duarte, which features works by Amilcar Packer, Cadu, Carla Zaccagnini, CINEMATA (Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago MM), Fabio Morais, Keila Alaver, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Leya Mira Brander, Lia Chaia, Marcelo Cidade, Marilá Dardot, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Maurício Ianês, Nicolás Robbio, Rafael Assef, Virgínia de Medeiros and Wagner Morales. For the opening of the exhibition, curators Suzy Capó (Festival Mix Brasil) and Jürgen Brünning (Pornfilmfestival Berlin) created the OPEN CALL program composed of films and videos that will be projected onto the gallery’s facade.
Of course you know what I’m talking about? is the result of research by 17 artists, selected by curator Luisa Duarte and Vermelho director Eduardo Brandão, on the topic of sex. According to Duarte, the desire to address this issue arose from the observation of the absence of the theme in current art, and can be summarized in the following question: how is the representation of sex in the production of young Brazilian artists today? With the intention of lining up exchanges, ways of seeing, listening and saying, the artists were asked to read texts by Georges Bataille, Octavio Paz, Sigmund Freud, Severo Sarduy, among others.
Sex, its developments and categorizations was a highly discussed and studied topic in various areas of knowledge in the 20th century. In the field of art, from Duchamp to the surrealists, passing through poetic and literary production, eroticism was also the center of attention. From the 1960s onwards, the so-called sexual revolution began. The introduction of contraceptives promotes a radical change in behavior patterns, revised in the 1980s with the arrival of AIDS. An artist who condenses this historical arc in her work, including the debate on multiculturalism and the micro-politics of minorities, is Nan Goldin.
Currently, pornography seems to replace eroticism. It gives rise to visibility, and eroticism shelters a game of imagination that hyper-accelerated time has difficulty supporting. In the 21st century, the fear of AIDS was replaced by a kind of ideal of complete freedom regarding sexuality, as if it were not marked by the unique history of each subject’s formation. In a world where it is important to turn everything into merchandise, people and their respective sexualities come into play. The logic of market society requires that everything make sense so that it can be recognizable and gain consumer value. Part of contemporary art understood this system and made this understanding its leitmotif.
A different stance to this can be found in the book that inspires the title of this exhibition, by writer and filmmaker Miranda July. In it, there is an eroticism of the clumsy, of lovers, more than of the loved ones. Pedro Almodóvar also puts on stage a repertoire of characters with great ethical and political developments, full of sexual desire and driven by love, and almost always allowing a glimpse of vulnerability, the desire that ignores the law, the humanity that knows and recognizes its flaws. The lack of purpose present in art and eroticism is in every way contrary to a world that seeks precision, competence, productivity, correction, the right place, even for that which is constitutive of each individual and sometimes a mystery. for himself.
Vermelho presents, from October 3rd to 11th, 2008, É claro que você sabe do que estou falando? [Of course you know what I’m talking about?], collective exhibition curated by Luisa Duarte, which features works by Amilcar Packer, Cadu, Carla Zaccagnini, CINEMATA (Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago MM), Fabio Morais, Keila Alaver, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Leya Mira Brander, Lia Chaia, Marcelo Cidade, Marilá Dardot, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Maurício Ianês, Nicolás Robbio, Rafael Assef, Virgínia de Medeiros and Wagner Morales. For the opening of the exhibition, curators Suzy Capó (Festival Mix Brasil) and Jürgen Brünning (Pornfilmfestival Berlin) created the OPEN CALL program composed of films and videos that will be projected onto the gallery’s facade.
Of course you know what I’m talking about? is the result of research by 17 artists, selected by curator Luisa Duarte and Vermelho director Eduardo Brandão, on the topic of sex. According to Duarte, the desire to address this issue arose from the observation of the absence of the theme in current art, and can be summarized in the following question: how is the representation of sex in the production of young Brazilian artists today? With the intention of lining up exchanges, ways of seeing, listening and saying, the artists were asked to read texts by Georges Bataille, Octavio Paz, Sigmund Freud, Severo Sarduy, among others.
Sex, its developments and categorizations was a highly discussed and studied topic in various areas of knowledge in the 20th century. In the field of art, from Duchamp to the surrealists, passing through poetic and literary production, eroticism was also the center of attention. From the 1960s onwards, the so-called sexual revolution began. The introduction of contraceptives promotes a radical change in behavior patterns, revised in the 1980s with the arrival of AIDS. An artist who condenses this historical arc in her work, including the debate on multiculturalism and the micro-politics of minorities, is Nan Goldin.
Currently, pornography seems to replace eroticism. It gives rise to visibility, and eroticism shelters a game of imagination that hyper-accelerated time has difficulty supporting. In the 21st century, the fear of AIDS was replaced by a kind of ideal of complete freedom regarding sexuality, as if it were not marked by the unique history of each subject’s formation. In a world where it is important to turn everything into merchandise, people and their respective sexualities come into play. The logic of market society requires that everything make sense so that it can be recognizable and gain consumer value. Part of contemporary art understood this system and made this understanding its leitmotif.
A different stance to this can be found in the book that inspires the title of this exhibition, by writer and filmmaker Miranda July. In it, there is an eroticism of the clumsy, of lovers, more than of the loved ones. Pedro Almodóvar also puts on stage a repertoire of characters with great ethical and political developments, full of sexual desire and driven by love, and almost always allowing a glimpse of vulnerability, the desire that ignores the law, the humanity that knows and recognizes its flaws. The lack of purpose present in art and eroticism is in every way contrary to a world that seeks precision, competence, productivity, correction, the right place, even for that which is constitutive of each individual and sometimes a mystery. for himself.