AFTER UTOPIA - a view on Brazilian contemporary art

The show investigates a specific dimension of the Brazilian creative scene, through the selected works of twenty-seven artists using art as an exchange territory. A suspension of both time and space, whose only key is our way of interacting with it. The exhibition path analyzes Brazilian art as if it were a reflection of its original identity, an effect overriding every stereotype consolidated and transferred by European culture. The show takes its metaphorical cue from the building of one of the greatest utopias ever conceived: the city of Brasilia. A place with no particular place, which has witnessed the idea itself of elite becoming a tangible center of power. Brasilia is still conceived as the contact point between archaic and modern Brazil – although the two remain to this day unknown and misunderstood to each other. But Brasilia itself won’t be the center of the show. The development of its utopia, through the last Oscar Niemeyer project, will become a way to understand how contemporary Brazilian art represents space: a symbol of planned and overcome futures, a place transforming its times. The selected artists – from Helio Oiticica to Waltercio Caldas, from Cildo Meireles to Ernesto Neto, from Laura Vinci to Andrè Komatsu – all recompose a Brazilian utopia not as it had originally been conceived, but as a way of overcoming or escaping it. In such place art will be a solved utopia, ready to turn once again into the project of an apparent city, an unrealizable place concretized on a support of universal principles. What remains after utopia is the place of absence, of what only exists through subtraction: today, reaching an ideal no longer implies expectation, hope and perfection. Contemporary Brazilian art is developing today a different utopia: no longer an authorial project, but simply an aesthetic process struggling for its affirmation, for its liberation, for its earthly representation: fighting to build a new, just society, to reach an equality of ideas. Such society will no longer be transformed by an individual author’s project, but only by wider, inner stirrings.

Utopia after itself – after all individual convictions – must remain a factor of history, a creative-subversive motion corroding the workings of history itself; on the other hand, the ideology it goes hand in hand with finally becomes a mere conservational device. Present-day Brazil, faced with the massifying American model, has put the stress on the richness of its diversity: environmental, social and political diversities all lie within its own boundaries. After Utopia, in this process, represents a unit of time and space that can contribute a share to the understanding of how representation, in the Brazilian art scene, is freeing itself from all alienations and contradictions dividing – and ultimately eroding – its native freedom.

SELECTED ARTISTS Brígida Baltar (Rio de Janeiro 1959) Cadu (São Paulo 1977) Waltercio Caldas (Rio de Janeiro 1946) Marcos Chaves (Rio de Janeiro 1961) Marcelo Cidade (São Paulo 1979) Eduardo Coimbra (Rio de Janeiro 1955) Leandro da Costa (São Paulo 1973) Antonio Dias (Paràiba 1944) Fernando A. ( São Paulo 1976) Andrè Komatsu (São Paulo, 1978) Guto Lacaz (São Paulo 1948) Marcellvs L. (Belo Horizonte 1980) Marepe (Santo Antonio de Hesùs 1970) Cildo Meireles (Rio de Janeiro 1948) Vik Muniz (São Paulo 1961) Ernesto Neto (Rio de Janeiro 1964) Rivane Neuenschwander (Belo Horizonte 1967) Oscar Niemeyer (Laranjeiras 1907) Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro 1937-1980) Matheus Rocha Pitta (Tiradentes 1980) Thiago Rocha Pitta (Tiradentes 1980) Daniel Senise (Rio de Janeiro 1955) Eduardo Srur (São Paulo 1974) Ana Maria Tavares (Belo Horizonte 1958) Janaina Tschäpe (Munich - Brazil 1973) Mary Vieira (Belo Horizonte 1927- Basel 2001) Laura Vinci (São Paulo 1962)

AFTER UTOPIA
a view on Brazilian contemporary art
Kuratoren: Atto Belloli Ardessi mit Ginevra Bria

Künstler: Brigida Baltar, Cadu , Waltercio Caldas, Marcos Chaves, Marcelo Cidade, Eduardo Coimbra, Leandro da Costa, Antonio Dias, Fernando A. , Andre Komatsu, Guto Lacaz, Marcellvs L. , Marepe , Cildo Meireles, Vik Muniz, Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander , Oscar Niemeyer, Hélio Oiticica, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Daniel Senise, Eduardo Srur, Ana Maria Tavares, Janaina Tschäpe, Mary Vieira, Laura Vinci