May 9 - June 23, 2012
Curator: Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
Galeria Raquel Arnaud
São Paulo, Brazil
Artists
Carlos Zílio, Felix Gmelin, Haris Epaminonda, Héctor Zamora, Lisa Tan, Mabe Bethônico
In his User’s Guide to Détournement, Guy Debord argues that one of the most efficient strategies for social insubordination is the appropriation, or détournement, of extraneous phrases and concepts for revolutionary purposes. Debord identified various types of détournements, among them the minor détournement, in which appropriate words or phrases possess no importance of their own, acquiring it, instead, by virtue of the new context in which they are used, and especially the deceptive détournement, in which the appropriate concept is intrinsically meaningful but takes on a different dimension and a value according to the new context into which it flows. The phrase that lends its name to the exhibition evidently belongs to the latter type: taken from a recent interview with [Brazilian architect] Paulo Mendes da Rocha, in its original context it referred to the need for a revolution in the methodologies of civil construction and, metonymically speaking, in cities and in society as a whole. Within the new context, the phrase retains its fascination while taking on other meanings pointing, first of all, to an art gallery’s constant need for transforming itself, for keeping in touch with the ongoing changes in artistic production and (one might also speak here of metonymy, or even of premonition) of society itself. Evidently, the greater and more prestigious the gallery’s history, the more pressing and arduous such a task becomes...
The architect says that revolution must be made little by little. Initially organized in smaller and more conceptually cohesive groups, then finally rearranged according to other criteria in the final reprise, the works gathered here indeed suggest a prolonged revolution, of the sort that does not make it into the history books, perhaps not even into the art history books, for the simple reason that they do not begin or end – they merely happen. And, in fact, the choice of subject matter for the first three stages of the exhibition responds precisely to the desire to regard a single universe from several distinct albeit complementary perspectives. It is also no accident that the majority of the works might fit perfectly into yet another one of these curatorial landmarks: the revolution is magmatic, fluid, like a river that is never the same and that, nonetheless, never changes. On the other hand, the decision to divide the exhibition into stages responds to a desire to disengage from convention, such as the one that dictates, to a gallery, the need to exhibit only “its” own artists, or of not repeating the same work in two consecutive exhibitions, or even of not attempting to construct a narrative that dares to expand beyond the few weeks’ duration of a conventional show. Finally, to disengage from preconceptions that might prevent the revolution from taking place, the first of which, naturally, is the convention that a revolution must be swift, surprising and violent when, in fact, it ought to happen incrementally, taking whatever time may be necessary time in order to occupy and change the world while no one is looking.
part 1.
Difference and Repetition
Before deciding definitely that the title of the first stage of A revolução tem que ser feita pouco a pouco [The Revolution Must Be Made Little by Little] would be Diferença e repetição [Difference and Repetition], a quite extensive albeit relatively simple search was carried out to verify whether, in fact, there had been other exhibitions with the same title in recent years. Naturally, there were, the last of them having been held only a few months ago, when preparations for the present show were already well underway and, to all intents and purposes, the title had already been decided upon. In this particular event the coincidence (which, in other cases, might have been unfortunate), the fact wound up validating the decision to reflect upon the problem and, more specifically, about the manner in which the idea of repetition which is, nevertheless, always different, constitutes a recurring subject and, in spite of this, is always open to new interpretations and readings, within the field of art and, more generally, within that of contemporary culture. Naturally, the most direct reference is to the book by Gilles Deleuze whence the title was (in this and in other cases) détourned, although another, no less important allusion is made to Pierre Menard, a character in a short story by Borges whose most astonishing enterprise was not that of rewriting two chapters (and part of a third) of Don Quijote, but of writing passages of a book utterly different from the one written by Cervantes, in spite of the fact that the two were exactly identical, line by line and word for word. Equally as pertinent, and in a much closer manner to what is stated by Deleuze himself, it might be argued that, in this, Menard gave proof of no particular ability given that, it is quite simply impossible to remake anything. The more alike, the more distinctly different two versions of a given work, a given image or (it may be worth considering) a given idea will be.Within the specific field of artistic output during the last few decades, these problems have remained in the order of the day, to the point that they constitute the central subject of the work of several artists, from appropriationists who may already be considered “historical” (such as Elaine Sturtevant and Sherrie Levine) to more recent exponents for whom the decision to repeat – albeit with inevitable differences – becomes a political act (Sandra Gamarra), a near-philosophical method of study and reflection (Roni Horn) or a passionate tribute (Jonathan Monk). On the other hand, to the artists included in this exhibition, the question is not fundamental, and it is precisely this consideration that eventually justifies the bringing together of their works, somehow underscoring how much – by pointing out both difference and repetition – of what we do emphasizes the existence of relationships. This notion is evidently central to the work of Lisa Tan, a series of portraits of book “couples”, fruit of the fusion of the artist’s own library with that of her partner. In some cases, the editions are the same, the pair is identical, in others, small or great disparities suggest that any relationship is born from the sum of differences and resemblances, and with the challenge of surviving both. The search for a relationship is also what moves the O Colecionador [The Collector] project by Mabe Bethônico, in which the artist gives in to a temptation (or mania) for taxonomy, compulsively accumulating newspaper clippings with similar albeit never completely identical images, successively classified according to extremely precise typologies, as though this archival fury might help it – and us – to understand the world. A world from which the images of Haris Epaminonda brings us sparse fragments: in making Polaroid camera reproductions of pictures originally shot in the 1950s, the Cypriot artist composes an elegy to time past even as he conducts to its extreme the debate on the impossibility of reproducing anything in different contexts and periods. Héctor Zamora’s swarm of Zeppelins (which had previously invaded Venice in 2009) explores other implications for the concept of repetition by being not only the result of the serialization of a form but a work that aspired to become an urban legend – that is, to be repeated differently each time, until it completely lost all control over itself and became genuinely public. Analogously, the power of the nails drawn by Carlos Zílio in the late 1970s for a series of silk screens (again, repetition, here in the guise of “technical reproduction”...) lies in serialization – in this instance evidently charged with the political messages and metaphors that marked the country’s best work of that period, in a tacit yet powerful invitation to insurrection. The same invitation that animated Gert Conradt’s 1968 film, in which film school students run through Berlin bearing a red flag. Twenty-five years later, in filming an almost identical sequence on video with his students and projecting the two side by side, Felix Gmelin pays tribute to his father, one of the students/actors in the original video, but also points out the fact that, à la Menard, “my film is about something completely different [from Conradt’s original], in spite of the fact that I repeat the same actions”. In the artist’s words, and in a manner surprisingly pertinent to the scope of this exhibition, Gmelin suggests that the principal difference the present day and the time in which his father and Conradt made the original film is that they “were convinced that revolution was the method that would succeed in changing the world”.
- Jacopo Crivelli Visconti