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open air: large scale works at fazenda boa vista
fazenda boa vista
july, 2020 – january, 2021
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Galeria Nara Roesler is pleased to inaugurate Open Air, a large-scale sculpture exhibition installed in the gardens of the Fazenda Boa Vista. Placed under the open sky, the presentation offers an invitation to explore the landscape through pieces that propose new ways of understanding our relationship with space.
Open space sculpture installations have accompanied humanity's own history in numerous different configurations. Pre-historic ritual monuments, obelisks, pyramids and portrait sculptures are a few examples of sculptural practices that have come to punctuate social constructions and human symbolic narratives since their inception. The eight artists selected for Open Air have sought to achieve contemporary responses to the tradition, which still inhabits our collective imaginary. The exhibition invites the audience to take on the role of an observer, who not only sees the work from a distance but is also free to circle and get in close proximity with the pieces. Thus, the viewers interact and establish an extended temporal relationship with the objects, enabling an active contemplation of the sculptures, which transform the very space they inhabit.
This project is a collaboration between Galeria Nara Roesler and JHSF.
Open Air is an exhibition located in a private condominium. Access is restricted to residents and guests.
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Caminho das cores do escuro, which was produced during the year before Amelia Toledo’s passing, is marked by a compositional simplicity that synthesizes the artist’s decades of investigations and work. The artist, whose practice included sculpture, painting and print-making, also worked at Vilanova Artigas as a jewelry and architecture project designer. Perhaps as a consequence, her practice was based on the interaction between form and matter, based on a vocabulary on Concrete Art. Em Caminho das cores do escuro is made up of large fragments of pink quartz which interact with a mirror steel plate. The physical presence of the material is thus multiplied through the reflexive surface, making its volume seem much larger and creating a spatial illusion that appears to converge the language of the pictorial and the sculptural.
Amelia Toledo
Caminho das cores do escuro, 2017
mirrored stainless steel and rose quartz
140 x 600 cm (variable dimensions according to the set-up) -
Artur Lescher's Elipse #09 is part of a series which the artist began developing in 2000. According to curator and critic Aracy Amaral, the shapes origin 'is the oblique cross section of a cone. Hence, they may have different dimensions, depending on which section of the cone they represent. So, from the cross section there came the elliptic form: piercing sharpness, incisive, sharp edged, are all terms that occur to one on contemplating this space he has created.' Due to its color, the object creates somewhat of a negative, whereby the black surface, placed in the middle of a landscape, captures our gaze and appears to offer a portal to another dimension.
Artur Lescher
Elipse # 09, 2008
polyester resin with automotive paint
300 x 70 x 35 cm -
Daniel Buren's The Exploded Hut: homage to Oscar Niemeyer, situated work establish a unique dialogue with the architectural tradition of modernism, typically characterised by the use of modular constructions and industrial materials. As suggested by the title of the work, the piece is not only a homage to the style, but also to one of its leading figures in Brazil and worldwide. Both Buren and Niemeyer's projects, work to modify landscapes through visual forms with strong aesthetic potency. In fact, The Exploded Hut not only interferes in space but also in the viewers' perception of it, as landscapes are seen through the numerous color filters that make up the work's structure, instilling new, not naturally occurring hues. The interaction between the artificial colours proposed by the artist and the organic tones of nature, allow for further chromatic possibilities to emerge—purely ephemerally—depending on the position of the viewer and of the light.
Daniel Buren
The Exploded Hut: homage to Oscar Niemeyer, situated work, 2015
colored transparent filters and vinyl on transparent and colorless plexiglass, metal structure
310 x 850 x 850 cm -
Cloud consulate by Argentinean artist Eduardo Navarro, offers a place of refuge and of observation. The work was first exhibited in 2019, on the occasion of the SP-Arte project Open Space, showcasing the sculpture’s role as an optic instrument, or a hybrid between a periscope and a kaleidoscope. The mirrors, which line the internal walls of this ‘sky observation station’ allow for the viewer to not only admire the sky, but also feel surrounded by it. As such - as is often the case in the artist’s practice - the installation undertakes the role of a sensorial vehicle, elevating the public to other mental states by creating a state of communion between different entities and natural phenomena.
Eduardo Navarro
Cloud consulate, 2019
mirror, glass, mirrored vinyl and wood
edition of 3 + 2 AP
290 x 350 x 100 cm -
In Art History, the subject of the Three Graces has been traditionally related to the representation of the female body. Having been widely represented, in styles as diverse as those of Raphael, Rubens, Canova, Maillol, the Graces has above anything, become the image of an image that has crossed generations. Laura Vinci’s various interpretations and investigations on the matter, have focused particularly on a play with formal references, where material has also undertaken an important role. Vinci’s Duas Graças [Two Graces] are characterized by fluid and voluptuous shapes, with curvilinear silhouettes that establish a dialogue between the pre-historic Venus and the tradition’s formal grammar, also entwining the classical era through the artist’s use of marble.
Laura Vinci
Duas graças [Two Graces], 2016
marble
edition of 2
82 x 85 x 100 cm (each) -
Not Vital's Tongue measures over five meters in height and is made up of reflexive stainless steel, which when placed outside, incorporates the landscapes onto its surface through the process of reflection. The work also establishes a dialogue with the shape of an obelisk - a commemorative monument which originated in Ancient Egypt. Together, when one encounters the work, one seems to face a mirage, as the landscape is distorted and projected through the surface of the piece. Vital built his practice based on exploring the human relationship with nature. His objects alter our perception of both, the natural and architectural landscape they occupy.
Not Vital
Tongue, 2018
stainless steel507 x 104 x 124 cm
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Raul Mourão’s Hourglass and The Flag will offer movement through the gardens of Boa Vista. This body of work developed from the artist’s observations of, and concerns about the use of security grids and other urban structures, as a means of dividing public and private spaces. Mourão’s poetic constructions culminate in robust metal structures, which are made to seem fragile through the use of balance. With this, the artist places dichotomies between heaviness and lightness, violence and sensitivity, at the forefront of his oeuvre, making his audience oscillate, just like his sculptures do.
Raul Mourão
Hourglass, 2020
corten steel
465 x 350 x 250 cm -
Raul Mourão
The Flag, 2020
corten steel
300 x 350 x 250 cm -
Tomie Ohtake produced several public installation works during her career, which have been placed throughout Brazil and particularly in São Paulo, where she lived for many years. Sem título is an imposing sculpture by the artist, converging her iconic graphic and sculptural language. The artist began working on special projects for public spaces in 1983, creating steel sculptures that were subsequently covered in solid colored paint. Her characteristic use of curved planes and lines give the material a sense of lightness, as is the case in Sem título, which from far away seems to constitute a single plane incorporating the landscape. As one comes closer, one is able to denote that the piece is made of superimposed planes, the first one covered is black paint and is framed by a second, red plane.
Tomie Ohtake
Untitled, 1995 / 2014
automotive paint on metal
unique
296 x 354 x 132 cm