In Matriz legal [Legal matrix], Komatsu creates geometric and labyrinthine designs with barbed wire on wooden supports, encircling “prepared” areas with paint and acrylic putty. The white fields, which would usually be the basis for the pictorial construction on the wooden panels, are supplemented – or oppressed – by the potential danger represented by the barbed wire.

“Rennó’s insistence on working with portraits crosses supports and articulations and lays bare the transparency of the photographic image. Before being objects full of meanings, works of art, gems for collectors, these photos were just identification portraits or vernacular images. They served to be presented to the authorities, but also to carry in your wallet, paste in an album, or show to friends, to kiss… time has turned them into memories, into relics, into imago.”

Maria Angélica Melendi – Excerpt from Little Ecology of the Image: a glossary under construction, 2021

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.

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.

The title Memória Gráfica [Graphic Memory], refers to the set of lithographic stones that Moscheta found broken irregularly and used to complete his fractioned drawings of rock formations. Moscheta works with the idea that through fragments we can mentally compose an imaginary mountain range of “fulls” and “empties”, in an artistic operation that unites the drawing to the object, as part of the same linguistic system.

The linear bases trace the path to the graphite drawing on a black background, which are rebounded by the lithographic stones which fissures complete the representation of the rock formations, as if both were the same: the represented object and the instrument of representation, the memory contained on the surface of the lithographic stone (which one day generated numerous reproductions) in a new and last black print that returns it to the landscape of stones. The lithographic stone ceases to be the matrix to become the copy.

In the Clouds series, we can, from a distance, look for shapes in the clouds like in the childs game. But upon approaching the works, we can see that, in fact, the clouds are made of letters that form words.

The letters, scattered throughout the images, also require some investigation to reveal themselves to the viewer.

Amazônia, Rio Branco is part of the group of works produced by Albergaria from the study trip “Amazon Expedition: Seeking to understand the greatest diversity of the planet”, coordinated by botanist Lúcia Lohmann (Institute of Biosciences of USP), which traveled the rivers Black and White and its margins.

Alongside the scientists, Albergaria collected the plants, photographed, drew and organized all the material. “During the scientific process of cataloging, I observed that the initial color and shape of the plants are the two characteristics that are most easily lost. Any traditional herbarium always presents dry leaves (with dimensions already altered by drying) and without their natural color (also due to drying). What I wanted to add was something that this process couldn’t provide – and that’s why I made my own notebook with the colors and dimensions of the species”, says Albergaria.

The works produced by Albergaria from that trip were the structure of the individual exhibition, Para onde agora? Where to now? Aller oú maintenant?, curated by Marta Bogéa at MAC USP in 2022.

The works from the series Explosão Plástica (Inevitável), 2022, were part of the installation with the same title, where a mural painting expanded across all walls of the room where they were exhibited, and overlapped polyptych sets formed by wooden planks – which were work tables in Dora Longo Bahia’s studio, or in projects carried out by her and the study group she supervises, Depois do fim da arte (ex-Anarcademia) – with white canvases. The boards are presented full of work marks, with remains of paint and stylus marks. The mural showed the image of a huge explosion.

Abraxas composes the sculptural set made since 2019 in co-authorship with the jeweler and artist Virgilio Bahde. In the book “Demian”, an initiatory novel by the writer Herman Hesse, the deity Abraxas is worshiped by the young characters, who become aware of the fragility of morals, the family and the State. The entity stands out for having human characteristics, being capable of exercising good and evil. We are faced with the improbable cultivation, through carving and metallurgy, of animal, vegetable and mineral possibilities, which confuse the eye due to the coexistence of the kingdoms comprising it.

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

The Sum of All Colors is part of a meditative process by Banfi where she utilizes textile waste from a clothing brand. Banfi explains that, during the isolation imposed by the Covid 19 pandemic, she began to embroider timelines and contours of LPs on white fabrics. The color, inspired by the sun, is a reference to the sum of all colors of the visible sprectrum of light.

Amazônia, Rio Branco is part of the group of works produced by Albergaria from the study trip “Amazon Expedition: Seeking to understand the greatest diversity of the planet”, coordinated by botanist Lúcia Lohmann (Institute of Biosciences of USP), which traveled the rivers Black and White and its margins.

With this work, the artist explores the notion of artistic failure through the historical figure of Samuel Morse, the renowned inventor who began his successful career in telegraphy while seeing the vanishing of his dream of becoming an artist of the stature of the great European painters he most admired.
The photography in this work focuses on the first prototype built by Morse for his telegraphic project in 1837. In this first initial experiment, Morse installed the telegraphic apparatus in a pictorial frame, with which – probably unintentionally – he gave history an image in which one can visualize a cross between the world of the arts and that of the sciences.
The works that accompany the photography are transcriptions in Morse code of some of the letters that Morse wrote expressing his sadness and frustration when he understood that he would not become the great artist he had set out to become and that, therefore, he would not see realized the dreams for which he prepared himself at art academies in the United States and in Europe.
In addition to the inventor’s feelings, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria recognizes Morse’s communicative creation as a powerful work of abstract art that goes far beyond the first goals that the author had set for himself in painting.

Seja amiga, noiva seja
Esposa, ninfa, santa ou deusa
Entre eles fole, tempo e areia
Uma questão de ampulheta
Contou que dera para dormir com
marinheiros agora
Assim velejava
Iemanjava
Vênus dá, Vênus tira
Salmouras de cais
Mas tudo pode mudar no malavrar
No danar
No nadar no nada mar
E ela… pode até a cortesia de voltar