Marco Maggi

Instituto Tomie Ohtake presents an unprecedented exhibition of Marco Maggi (Montevideo, 1957), the renowned Uruguayan artist who lives between New York and Montevideo, known to Brazilians, in particular, for his participation at the 25th International Biennial of São Paulo and at the 3rd and 4th editions of Bienal do Mercosul. For Maggi, we are establishing a ‘dysfunctional information society: reality becomes unreadable, and the visual arts, invisible.’

Functional disinformation, drawings in Portuguese puts together 13 works performed between 2008 and 2012, including two installations that illustrate a singular poetic on behalf of time, doubt, and daydream. "Drawing is like writing in an illegible language — I’m a promoter of breaks and my intention is to suggest a protocol change, one that would allow us to make time visible," he claims.

The exhibition proposes a 700-stop journey, composed of clusters of abundant paper sheets and subtle incisions, establishing a spatial framework — compass, topography, and drawing all at once. The work set unveils unusual ways of operating the drawing: constructed by cutting on 500 A4 paper sheets framed in acrylic box; in pencil on clay tiles, among many other strategies and materials. "All my work lies on the threshold between two and three dimensions: engraving and drawing, plan and installation, the line that cuts the paper and the micro sculpture," says Maggi.

According to him, failing to understand and feeling insecure is a way to reduce the speed of our decisions and multiply our attention, being more careful and delicate. "This exhibition is a sluggish scandal, a detention aimed to encourage our fragile sympathy for the insignificant," he adds.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 to honor the Japanese-Brazilian artist of the same name. The institute is a cultural center which, both architecturally and conceptually, is designed to host exhibitions of national and international fine art, architecture, design, and other cultural manifestations. At the same time, it conducts research, publishes books, and develops educational projects, as well as debates and lectures on a broad range of topics.

Marco Maggi
Functional disinformation,
drawings in Portuguese