Dias Riedweg, Universo do Baile, 2008. 3 channel Video installation, 14’32” loop,
Dimensions variable © Courtesy Galeria Filomena Soares and the artist
The exhibition “Brasiliana”, which opens this week at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, advances the observation that installation art, of the large-scale, cavernous type in particular, enjoys a special position within Brazilian art history. Eight large-scale works will transform the Schirn into a series of spaces to be experienced with all the senses, hosting installations that integrate viewers directly, as active participants. The show spans works from the 1960s to contemporary artistic positions, seeking to demonstrate the Brazilian lineage of this “art of experience.”
Several installations, by artists like Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida, Lygia Clark, Tunga, and Cildo Meireles – now considered classical within the narrative of recent Brazilian art history – provide a persuasive historical footing to the overall theme and statement. The younger generation is represented by artists such as Ernesto Neto, Maria Nepomuceno, Henrique Oliviera, and Dias & Riedweg, who continue to demonstrate a fascination with installation in Brazilian art leading to the present.
But where does this fascination stem from? Permitting a general statement, art from Brazil is characterised overwhelmingly by modern and contemporary strands when compared to tradition-laden European art. The origins of the installation medium in Brazil date back to the 1960s, when modern theories and modernist currents dominated the art world. From this kernel, an originally Brazilian art has developed, which thrives on the interplay of different influences and cultures. Powerful and expressive, more often than not it sets on the sensory and even physical penetration of the works of art.
Hélio Oiticica in his studio, Rio de Janeiro, around 1965. Courtesy of Projeto Hélio Oiticica Henrique
Curator Dr. Martina Weinhart explains: “Brazil developed its own form of modernism, which draws on diverse influences. The result was a dynamic art that is closely linked to life and expresses the international vocabulary of modernism in a language that is typically Brazilian. Far from the common clichés about their country, Brazilian artists since the 1960s have developed highly exciting and multi-sensory strategies in which the viewers’ participation, the tactile, and the entire body play central roles. The Brazilian installation is a medium of personal experience.”
Avant-garde artists such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica recognised early on the potential that lay in breaking free of conventional artistic genres and methods. They parted ways with the two-dimensional painting and designed a dynamic art that is closely tied to life, makes diverse local references, and draws the viewer into the centre of artistic production. This approach is reflected in a variety of aspects in subsequent generations of artists, who regard the connection between art and life equally as elemental as concentrating on the viewer. The artists produce extensive, space-filling spaces that completely involve the viewers, surrounding them, occupying them, assimilating them, and challenging them physically, tactilely, and visually.
BRASILIANA. INSTALLATIONS FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT Schirn Kunsthalle
UNTIL January 5, 2014