english
galeria expandida [expanded gallery]
exhibition design and curatorship by Christine Mello
curatorial assistance: Ananda Carvalho and Paula Garcia
held by: Luciana Brito Galeria
period: from April 5 (Monday, opening) to April 17 (Saturday, closing)
galeria expandida [expanded gallery] is a curatorial platform that reflects on the circuits of art and the media. Based on artists who produce mediatic actions, it discusses circuits of visibility in art. In a context in which artistic production is by nature dematerialized and transitory, the question it deals with is how can this production be hosted in an art gallery?
Taking as a principle the role played by the gallery in this sort of discussion, the idea of the gallery’s expansion is one of creating within it a situation of research and an area of reflection to generate situations of interaction and debate on the circulation of the artwork in immaterial and unforeseeable circumstances, beyond the gallery’s physical space.
In the present exhibition, galeria expandida [expanded gallery], the curatorial operation brings into the gallery a sort of work that normally occurs in environments outside of it: works that take place in the public space, of an ephemeral and mediatic nature. By allowing for a counter-circulation of these artworks and their environments, this operation aims to empower the action of these works within the gallery, activating it as an environment of relations and exchanges, as an informational flow.
At the beginning of the 2010s, with the presence of Internet 2 in the cultural sphere (interlinking information shared in the network, providing an extremely high-speed broadband connection between people initially separated by space and time), the perception of the communicational spaces and their insertion in daily life is enlarged in such a way and to such an extent that it is imperative for us to discuss their unfoldings in artistic actions and in the places where art normally circulates.
The exhibition achieves this by bringing into contact various experiences that have arisen in recent decades in the relations between art and communication, which have not yet been duly analyzed in the field of art history and criticism, contextualizing them contemporaneously in regard to questionings like these and in light of the new communicational realities.
Specifically, the exhibition presents a set of documentations concerning artworks by Analivia Cordeiro, Regina Silveira, Ricardo Basbaum, Gilbertto Prado, Lucas Bambozzi and Fabiana de Barros, produced respectively in the years from 1970 to 2000, associated with actions they have created especially for the exhibition, and to furthermore integrate this group of artists with new trends, being developed by artists such as Ana Paula Lobo, Bruno Faria, Claudio Bueno, Denise Agassi, Esqueleto Coletivo and Paula Garcia.
The choice of these artists is due, first of all, to the potentials and dialogs their works produce in contact with communicational circuits as well as to the way they reorganize the information and the hegemonic discourse prevailing in these media, and, secondly, to the social dimension of their practices.
The main aim is to present their artistic experiments under laboratory conditions, associated to a set of activities, and not necessarily present them as finished works, in the conventional sense of the term.
To these ends, galeria expandida [expanded gallery] is structured in five curatorial segments (historical, new trends, performances/debates, publication and online) and consists of activities such as: historical reviews of artistic experiments/experiences, followed by a cycle of statements (coordinated by Christine Mello, on the Wednesdays April 7 and April 14); the presentation of artworks shown here for the first time and documentation of ephemeral works; a cycle of performances (coordinated by Paula Garcia) followed by a cycle of debates (on the Saturdays April 10 and April 17); the realization of a catalog (under the editorial coordination of Ananda Carvalho and artists Eduardo Verderame and Manuela Eichner), an online space (coordinated by Ananda Carvalho, Deborah Alves and Forum Permanente), which question the outside and the inside of exhibition environments by way of artistic actions in dialog with communicational contexts.
The issues raised by the exhibition foster reflection in regard to the connections between established spaces for visual-arts circulation and experiences accessible in daily life (such as those promoted by Internet, television, mobile phones, indoor and outdoor media, newspapers, magazines, signs, promotional flyers, audio transmissions and T-shirts) that are part of the universe of communication networks, the advertising circuit and brands.
By calling attention to the channels wherein a good part of the symbolic and economic capital of contemporary society circulates, the curatorship proposes that the gallery’s environment be transformed into a space where both the framing and unframing of such experiences can take place.
Since the invention of photography art has promoted displacements of its traditional circuits to nonconventional ones recognizable in various areas including that of the communication circuits, while also acting as a privileged place for the investigations of Fluxus, pop art, conceptual propositions and art collectives. In this sense, the discussions presented in this curatorial platform occupy a historical and simultaneously tense context of these relations insofar as they explore this debate today and perceive existing relations in the field of digital culture.
Unlike the debates produced in the 1960s and ’70s, galeria expandida [expanded gallery] involves the experience of being inserted and acting within the institutional and social fabric of the networks where art and the communication channels circulate. In this specific case, the experience of insertion is engendered in a negotiated way and does not correspond to a gesture of intervention or invasion. It means being inserted in the public and economic space of the institutional fabric, seeking to act as a relational device between the space of the gallery and the space of communicational messages. In this way, it seeks to host discussions about paradoxes, conflicts, difficulties, and possibilities, doubts, negotiations, analogies and the existing dialogs between one field of action and another.
Thus, instead of seeking to discern in which specific context a given reality is located, the activities proposed here privilege the presence of debate based on contact with ambiguous experiences, of a decentralized character, involving intermediary states, estrangements and cross influences of one reality by another. The aim is not to think about the conventional venues of art and the areas of media as themes for the discussions, but rather to become more aware of how the negotiations and agencings between these areas offer another basis for questioning and perceiving them.
Since the mediatic spaces are infused in questions we cannot avoid confronting, as they bear a good part of the signs of contemporary life, it is therefore understandable that the artists, critics, gallerists, cultural operators, advertising and media professionals involved here reflect on these realities as well as on other situations of clashing within art in its capacity as a channel for the circulation of information.
In setting forth these challenges, the aim is to foment discussion on the relationships and paradoxes existing between art and the mediatic circuits, translated here under the form of a historic review of determined experiments, taking as a principle the enlarged sharing of artistic ideas in the decodification of life in terms of its signs.
Christine Mello
March 2010
galeria expandida [expanded gallery] curatorial segments
1) historical
Analívia Cordeiro, Regina Silveira, Ricardo Basbaum, Gilbertto Prado, Lucas Bambozzi and Fabiana de Barros.
Statements (coordinated by Christine Mello)
Wednesdays: April 7 and April 14, sessions at 11a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
April 7 – 11 a.m.: Analivia Cordeiro
April 7 – 2 p.m.: Regina Silveira
April 7 – 4 p.m.: Fabiana de Barros
April 14 – 11 a.m.: Ricardo Basbaum
April 14 – 2 p.m.: Lucas Bambozzi
April 14 – 4 p.m.: Gilbertto Prado
The statements will be broadcast live by the Permanent Forum: www.forumpermanente.org.br
2) new trends
Ana Paula Lobo, Bruno Faria, Cláudio Bueno, Denise Agassi, Esqueleto Coletivo and Paula Garcia.
3) performances/debates
performances – coordinated by Paula Garcia
The debates will be broadcast live by the Forum Permanente: www.forumpermanente.org.br
Monday, April 5 (opening of the exhibition) – at 7h30 p.m.
Performances by Esqueleto Coletivo and Paula Garcia
Saturday, April 10:
Performance by Fabiana de Barros – at 12 p.m.
followed by the debate expanded gallery: historical relations
André Mesquita, Chistine Mello, Martin Grosmann e Priscila Arantes
Saturday, April 17 (closing of exhibition) – at 12 p.m.
Conversation/sampler of experiences with Ricardo Basbaum
followed by the debate de expanded gallery: artistic relations
Luciana Brito, Paula Alzugaray, Monica Nador and Ricardo Basbaum
4) publication (catalog under the editorial coordination of Ananda Carvalho, Eduardo Verderame and Manuela Eichner)
5) online (www.lucianabritogaleria.com.br) – coordinated by Ananda Carvalho, Deborah Alves and Forum Permanente
www.forumpermanente.org
Blog: http://galeriaexpandida.wordpress.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Galeria-Expandida/100000901159432
