Todos na sala de estar na Casa Contemporânea
An itch you can’t reach
Since the Casa Contemporânea multidisciplinary space for exhibitions, meetings and debate on art, architectural and related subjects opened six years ago, we have learned that exhibiting, for the artist, was something as vital as the actual production itself. Obviously an exhibition cannot exist without a production, preferably consistent, but this same production continues to be made by the artist even though no exhibition has been planned for it. This occurs because every artist is driven by the need to create and express himself or herself. However, two things should be borne in mind: expressing oneself means doing so to another person and, if this expression is to have any chance of coming about, the product created must be honest or true at least for the person who created it. Although these are controversial concepts in dealing with art or unfashionable in daily life, they seem to make increasingly more sense, mainly in the art world but not only there.
As a result, we see that the artists who take part in the Casa´s activities, the discussion groups or the accompanying events, have this relationship of honesty in terms of their production as well as differences in what they do. So how to set up this exhibition?
The most important point was not to have a conventional curatorship approach, i.e. using an established theme to choose artists or works that could add something or bring different readings to the theme and expand it. It was carried out more as a way of organizing demands of the artists.
Through conversations with the coordinators or advocates of the groups, artists were recommended who themselves chose works they would like to show in public. It is against this backdrop of organizing these individual demands that the Casa worked, in such a way that the individual production would appear and the differences as well.
In this way, artists who had already followed a certain path, such as Helena Carvalhosa or Cyra de Araújo Moreira showed recent works. Others are in a period of reflection and reviewing their production or heading along experimental paths, such as Lilia Malheiros and Fabiola Racy, or are even expanding their research in the use of a certain language, such as Fabíola Notari.
Some of these artists are beginning to break through and are winning prizes in salons and having their own exhibitions. This is the case with Renata Pelegrini, Anne Courtois, Thiago Ruiz and Mariana Chaves, with different languages, approaches or themes. Finally, hopes are being pinned on artists who are just emerging, such as Davi Apenas and Renata Salgado who presented installations and objects from the projects or the studio at the exhibition.
We hope the diversity of the works will allow everyone who sees them to build a narrative without directions or stereotypes.
Therefore, that itch which affects the artist may, through the other person, be relieved somewhat bringing some degree of satisfaction, only to arise again at another time, in another place, raising continuous unrest.
Marcelo Salles
Translator John Fitzpatrick