Travertino rock formation appear in the series Skena in aqua (Microlandscapes), 2018. Photographs of the rock, of the marble family, are embroidered by Tavares with metallic filaments revealing the impurities resulting from their formation process. This “contaminated” material carries in itself the memory in the form of fossils of branches, leaves and imperfections. These are embedded in the deposits of materials in more or less parallel bands created by the action of water in contact with the rock over time. Travertino contains the history of architecture in itself: it has been used for thousands of years, from Ancient Rome to the present day. It was also one of the most used stones in modernist architecture.

[:pt]Pedras de Travertino aparecem na série Skena in aqua (Micropaisagens), de 2018, como fotografias bordadas com filamentos metálicos que evidenciam as impurezas das superfícies das pedras resultantes de seu processo de formação. Esse material “contaminado” traz em si memória - na forma de fósseis de ramos e folhas encravados em sua constituição – e imperfeição – com espaços ocos e com depósito de materiais em bandas mais ou menos paralelas criadas pela ação da água em contato com a rocha. O Travertino carrega a história da arquitetura: é usado a milhares de anos, da Roma Antiga até os dias de hoje. Foi uma das pedras mais utilizadas na arquitetura modernista.[:en]Travertino rock formation appear in the series Skena in aqua (Microlandscapes), 2018. Photographs of the rock, of the marble family, are embroidered by Tavares with metallic filaments revealing the impurities resulting from their formation process. This "contaminated" material carries in itself the memory in the form of fossils of branches, leaves and imperfections. These are embedded in the deposits of materials in more or less parallel bands created by the action of water in contact with the rock over time. Travertino contains the history of architecture in itself: it has been used for thousands of years, from Ancient Rome to the present day. It was also one of the most used stones in modernist architecture.[:]

Entering the first room of the gallery, Tavares establishes a dialogue with Mies van der Rohe and his Barcelona Pavilion. The artist shows a series of works that incorporate some of the materials used by van der Rohe with her own personal gestures, choice of materials and artistic strategies.

Barcelona (Antigodlin), from 2018, shows an elongated and modular pictorial field consisting of Travertino, green marble from Guatemala and a striped stainless steel plate. Depending on the observer’s point of view, due to an angular volume in the Travertino rock – added by the artist – the piece becomes small and succinct or reveals itself in its expanded horizontality. The title refers to the van der Rohe pavilion and also to something that is oblique or, something that is in opposition to God. The piece is a compliment to the ornament.

In Fotogrametria Hemisférica (Barcelona/São Paulo), 2018, Tavares creates a connection between the Spanish city of van der Rohe’s building and the city where she lives and works.

Juxtaposing materials such as Travertino rock, pleated stainless-steel plates of shifting colors and green marble, the artist creates a pictorial field that rotates between van der Rohe’s work, Oscar Niemeyer’s and her own. In addition to the modular organization characteristic of some of her work, Tavares has embedded the green marble with several lenses through which one can see backlit computer drawings of the interior of the Oca building that Niemeyer designed for the Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo.

The columns that Mies van der Rohe conceived for the Bracelona Pavillion reverberates in Paisagens Mudas (Janela para Mies) (Mute Landscapes (Window for Mies)), 2018, composed of a double stainless steel frame that holds two sheets of glass – as in the transparency games of the Barcelona Pavilion – juxtaposed with two pieces of pleated stainless steel plates. The steel multiplies the cruciform modulation of the columns in a vertical plan which mirrors and fragments its surroundings with its multiple angles in a kaleidoscopic way.

Tavares’s study of Mies van der Rohe’s work is present in Disjunção Colunar (para Mies), [Columnar Disjunction (for Mies)], a work that is part of a series that uses the column as the axis of interaction between the artist’s production and that of architects such as Niemeyer and Lina Bo Bardi.

Disjunção Colunar (para Mies) reproduces one of the eight stainless steel columns of the Barcelona Pavilion, but only 150 cm high, the measure of reference for architectural blueprints.


[:pt]Em Empenas Cegas. Ainda Loos (da série Condomínios), 2018, Tavares continua o diálogo com o arquiteto Adolf Loos, iniciado na exposição Atlântica Moderna: Puros e Negros, realizada em 2014 no Museu Vale. Em 1927, o arquiteto modernista checo Adolf Loos (1870 –1933) desenvolveu um projeto nunca realizado para a residência da cantora e bailarina afro-americana Josephine Baker (1906 –1975). O projeto partia de uma reforma rigorosa sobre duas casas existentes em uma esquina da Avenue Bugeaud, em Paris. A residência, que seria adornada em seu exterior por listras horizontais de mármore branco e preto, teria janelas fundas e pequenas para oferecer privacidade a sua ilustre moradora e para, como apreciava Loos, manter a atenção no interior da construção. No centro do prédio, estaria uma piscina que rasgaria dois andares da edificação, tendo vitrines em seu andar inferior propiciando aos convidados da artista observar seu corpo rompendo as águas. 

Em Empenas Cegas, Ana Maria Tavares cria módulos angulados em mármore Striatto Olympo, de procedência Bulgara, cuja matéria sedimentada faz lembrar as listras da fachada da casa Baker. Os polígonos de Empena Cega são como múltiplas visões da fachada do projeto de Loos. As formas também podem ser vistas como positivos moldados a partir das estreitas janelas da residência, que nunca foram pensadas para dar uma visão ao longe, mas sim, irromper a visão que procurasse escapar do ambiente ilibado de Loos.[:en]In the series Empenas Cegas, Ainda Loos (da série Condomínios) (Blind Guards, Still Loos (from the Condo series)), 2018, Tavares continues to dialogue with architect Adolf Loos - a dialogue she initiated in the exhibition Atlântica Moderna: Puros e Negros, held in 2014 at the Vale Museum in Vitoria, ES, Brazil. In 1927, the Czech modernist architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933) developed a project never realized for the residence of the African-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906 -1975). The project was based on a strict renovation of two existing houses on a corner of Avenue Bugeaud in Paris. The residence would show an exterior with horizontal stripes of white and black marble, with small, deep windows to offer privacy to its illustrious inhabitant and, as Loos favored, to keep the attention inside the building. In the center of the building there would be a swimming pool that would cut through two stories of the construction, having vitrines on its lower floor allowing the guests of the artist to watch her body break the waters. In Empenas Cegas, Tavares creates angled modules using Striatto Olympo marble of Bulgarian origin. The sedimented layers in this kind of marble resemble the stripes of the façade of Loos’ Baker house. The polygons of Empenas Cegas are like multiple views of the façade of Loos’ project. The shapes can also be seen as positives shaped from the narrow windows of the residence which were never meant to offer a view out, but rather to break the vision that sought to escape Loos's unblemished surroundings.
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Rotação Infinita: Invenzione para Piranesi (da série Airshaft), 2015, é um ambiente 3D onde um espaço ficcional é construído para comentar sobre a vida utópica e mecânica imaginada pelo modernismo, a partir da obra de Piranesi, mas que revela um mundo perdido abissal. Em Airshaft, a ideia é reproduzir um mundo que respira inquieto e que se quebra constantemente em uma perspectiva espelhada e fragmentada.Rotação Infinita: Invenzione para Piranesi (da série Airshaft), 2015, é um ambiente 3D onde um espaço ficcional é construído para comentar sobre a vida utópica e mecânica imaginada pelo modernismo, a partir da obra de Piranesi, mas que revela um mundo perdido abissal. Em Airshaft, a ideia é reproduzir um mundo que respira inquieto e que se quebra constantemente em uma perspectiva espelhada e fragmentada.

[:pt]Na série Eclipse (Hieróglifos sociais) (2011), projeções da estrutura da arquitetura da Oca a transformam em um corpo de luz e sombra através da impressão das imagens sobre vidro e espelho.[:en]In the Eclipse series (Social hieroglyphs) (2011), projections of the architecture of the Oca building are transformed into a body of lights and shadows through the layered printing of images on glass and mirrors.[:]

[:pt]Utopias Desviantes II (da série Hieróglifos Sociais), de 2015, explora o interior da Oca de Oscar Niemeyer com manipulações digitais que fazem uso de rebatimentos especulares múltiplos, que geram, segundo a artista, uma arquitetura desviante que cede lugar a uma visão de mundo em abismo. A série Hieróglifos Sociais propõe uma reflexão crítica acerca do legado modernista brasileiro a partir da releitura da arquitetura da Oca. Com esse procedimento, Tavares cria um universo desviante, contaminado, ao mesmo tempo em que simula oferecer a possibilidade de retomada à ordem racional, plantada na idealização do mundo modernista.[:en]Deviating Utopias II (from the Social Hieroglyphs series), from 2015, explores the interior of Oscar Niemeyer’s Oca with digital manipulations that make use of multiple specular refutations, which generate, according to Ana Maria Tavares, a deviant architecture that gives way to a vision of the world in abyss. The series Social Hieroglyphics proposes a critical reflection on the Brazilian modernist legacy from the re-interpretation of the architecture of the Oca. With this procedure, Tavares creates a deviant, contaminated universe, at the same time that it simulates an offer of possibility of resumption to the rational order, planted in the idealization of the modernist world.[:]