Cildo: Studies, spaces, time E-Book

Guilherme Wisnik

• Herausgeber: Ubu Editora
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 276

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This book presents Cildo's work, focusing on his "studies". A great part of his most relevant works are shown here not only through photos of them in exhibitions, but also through Cildo's drawings and sketches, which allow us to see his processes of creation. In here, there are well-known installations such as Eureka / Blindhotland, Malhas da Liberdade, La Bruja and Desvio para o Vermelho, Através. There are also some of his less known works, never before gathered in a book. Another highlight of the book is a selection of 12 fundamental texts about Cildo's work, written by critics from all over the world, throughout his career, from his first exhibition in 1969 to 2017.

Leseprobe

estudos, espaços, tempo

Cildo

Diego Matos e Guilherme Wisnik (orgs.)

BTG Pactual has proudly encouraged the development of Brazilian art over the past three decades. We have a long tradition of supporting pub-lications of artists such as Beatriz Milhazes, Carlos Vergara, Oswaldo Goeldi, Ivan Serpa, Alfredo Volpi, Adriana Varejão, Hélio Oiticica, Flávio de Carvalho, Manabu Mabe, Tomie Ohtake and Sergio Camargo.

It is with great pleasure that, this year, we sponsored the most com-plete monograph of one of the leading contemporary artists. Cildo – Studies, Spaces, Timecontemplates the artist’s entire trajectory, using as its leitmotif the notion of space and its effect on the public’s experi-ence. It is a propitious angle to reflect on multi-sensory perception in Brazilian art, since the artist creates projects that incorporate differ-ent dimensions simultaneously: sculpture, installation, and audio and olfactory experiences. Edited by Diego Moreira Matos and Guilherme Wisnik, the following pages interpret works that subvert consensus and our notion of reality.

Cildo Meireles transcends the boundaries of art by stressing a conceptual aspect. The artist declares being fascinated by the idea of something that is and simultaneously is not art. As an example, he cites the series, Insertions into Ideological Circuits that includes phrases and reflections engraved on banknotes and on soft-drink bottles. After the artist’s intervention, the objects were again put on the market. “For me, the important thing in the project was to introduce the idea of a ‘cir-cuit’”. This choice has political consequences, described by the artist himself: “Our primary commitment was to the public. Not to an art buyer, but literally to the viewers […]. To make works that exist not just in the consented space […], works that do not take form merely in the canvas […]. To work not with the metaphor of gunpowder – but rather with gun-powder itself” (Cildo Meireles, 1981).

BTG Pactual would like to thank Ubu Editora for the partnership. Through co-operations such as this one, we continue our support for human development projects that promote culture, education and so-cial consciousness.

Foreword

Artworks

Essays

Frederico Morais

“Environments” of Cildo Meireles

Ronaldo Brito

Unmodulated Frequency

João Moura Jr.

Metamorphosis of the Circle

Lisette Lagnado

Cildo Meireles: a Shift into Interpretation

Frederico Morais

Art as a Seductive Work of Industrial, Cultural and Ideological Counterintelligence

Guy Brett

Five Approaches

Maaretta Jaukkuri

Variations on Time

Moacir dos Anjos

Babel

Lynn Zelevansky

Worldmaking

Sônia Salzstein

Where

SuelY Rolnik

A Shift Towards the Unnameable

Diego Matos

Between Reason and Chaos, the Subtleties of Deflagration

Bibliography

Image credits

Cildo: Studies, Spaces, Time

“Lejos”[far] is one of the most beautiful words I know, because it presupposes that your self is in two places at once – here and there. The there is a condition of being.1

Cildo Meireles

Cildo Meireles (Rio de Janeiro, 1948) is one of Brazil’s most important living art-ists, perhaps the most important on the contemporary art scene. Paradoxically, he has always stressed the tension between art’s“plasticity” vs. its “visual as-pects”, elaborating on this tension in his synesthetic presentations, which use the other senses – hearing, smell, touch and taste – and which in turn occasion reflec-tions on the symbolic properties of materials, logical and mathematical reasoning, and raise philosophical, conceptual questions. Last but not least, the works de-construct and ponder Meireles’s place of origin – Brazil and the multiplicity of its geography and culture. All these elements are shifted, transformed, or displaced from the established, conventional contexts.

Given the already widespread public and critical awareness of Meireles’s works in Brazil and worldwide today, and the numerous texts already published about his life and oeuvre, it is necessary to clarify the purpose of this book.

Unlike all the previous publications, it has not been commissioned on an oc-casion of a specific exhibition, or conceived as a catalogue. Instead, our goal is to present an idea that is of uttermost importance when dealing with such a relevant and prolific artist, but which has not yet been addressed. On one hand, we aim to organize a collection of texts that expound and highlight the moments of growing national and international recognition of Meireles’s work, providing theoretical means for their critical interpretation. On the other hand, we wish to present a number of essential works stressing the notion of study, an idea that is fundamen-tal to Meireles’s poetics.

Indeed, we could say that a studyis one of the most fundamental concepts in Meireles’s career, since he considers a sketch as both, the start of a project whose final realization comes later, as well as a work that, in spite of being preparatory, by conceptual means, is complete in itself, as a series of instructions for actions, or, in another case, as notes which seek to deal with the impossibility of presenting in-finite scales, as those that are present in the notion of Physical Art. We can see this already at the beginning of Meireles’s career, in his subverting the Euclidean ge-ometry in Corners,in various Insertions Into Circuits2and, most of all, in the study series from 1969: Study for Space, Study for Time, and Study for Space /Time.

The word, “study,” is being used in a broader sense, similarly to the way it is used in music. The studies, or etudes, as they are called, of Debussy, Liszt, Schumann, and especially of Chopin – the first composer to radically transform a form that was originally meant for didactic practice – are not mere exercises to perfect piano technique. On the contrary, they are sophisticated concerts pre-sented as variations on well-known themes. However, Meireles is not a revolution-ary of form or technique. His studies are as if Chopin’s inputshad been twisted by Marcel Duchamp. They are variations on scale, value, semantics, energy, territori-ality, and on our means of measuring things or notions of time, circuits, and so on.

This is why we give such importance to studiesin this book, and to the docu-mentation of projects that attest to the diverse concepts and creative processes in Meireles’s works. We should note that Meireles created most of his art over con-

siderable periods of time, with long stretches between a work’s initial conception and final realization. In this book, we emphasize the lesser-known presentations of certain works that have been frequently shown, such as, La bruja and The Ser-mon on the Mount: Fiat Lux. At the same time, we chose to present more recent works, such as rio oir andPhysical Art: Geographical Mutations: Vertical Frontier, as well as their documentation process, and the works in the early stages – for the most part never shown, such as Homeless home– thus stressing the discursive potential of these projects, which we treat as studies,i.e. as artworks.3Further broadening our selection, we also chose to present works previously not exhibited in Brazil, such as, Before, Us Ants, andAmerikkka.

Similar considerations guided the selection of texts. The goal has been to present texts that serve as references on Meireles’s work, but that are not easily accessible to the general public. Naturally, the selection is not comprehensive, but rather a broad compendium of essential texts hitherto unavailable in Portu-guese, including publications that are either no longer in print or have never been published. For this reason, we have not included certain equally important essays that have been published in monographs by Phaidon/Cosac Naify (1999 / 2000), or organized by Reina Sofía/Serralves Museum (2013, also published by Cosac Naify), which are already in wide circulation and fairly well known to Brazilian readers.

While the more recent large exhibitions at Tate Modern, in London (2008),4and at the Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Palacio de Velázquez (2013),5in Madrid, solidified Meireles’s reputation as an internationally recognized con-temporary artist, we hope to show how other exhibitions were also key illustrious points in his career.

The beginning of Meireles’s practice included experimental projects, such as From Body to Earth(1970), coordinated by Frederico Morais, and Agnus Dei(1970), with an exhibition in the end proposed by the same critic, who spoke about the pro-duction of Cildo Meireles, Guilherme Vaz and Thereza Simões – the artists that took part in the project. It was in fact Morais who wrote the first critical pieces about the artist – texts initially published in newspapers that today are considered to be foun-dational. We re-publish one of these texts here. It is accompanied by a more recent and previously unpublished piece – a panoramic overview of the artist’s biography and work, up to the late 20th century, written for Itaú Cultural.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Meireles exhibited mostly in Brazilian salons, galleries, and museums, with works such as Mebs / Caráxia, Meshes of Freedomand Cases of Sacks, as well as notable installations such as Eureka/ Blindhotland, La bruja and Red Shift.6Funarte published in 1981 the first book about Meireles’s work, as part of the collection, Brazilian Contemporary Art. We republish the seminal essay by Ronaldo Brito that provides an integrated synthesis of Meireles’s art, and is an important contribution to the critical appreciation of his oeuvre until that moment.

The years 1980 to 1990 were decisive in the artist’s development, in terms of his art production and his profile and institutional, international recognition. We reference his large-scale installations, such as, Mission/ Missions,7shown in the legendary exhibition, Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth – check 1989), curated by Jean-Hubert Martin at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, and Through(1989) at Kortrik, in Belgium, on the occasion of an exhibition about him and Tunga, as well as in the exhibition Projects 21, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1990), curated by Lynn Zelevansky, in which Meireles showed Oblivion, and his participating in the 9th Documenta in Kassel (1992), curated by Jan Hoet, for which he created Fountains/ Sources. Meireles’s creative fomenta-tion and growing public profile outside of Brazil culminated in a large international exhibition at Ivam– Centre del Carme, in Valencia, Spain, in 1995, curated by Vi-

cente Todolí and with an editorial participation of Bartomeu Marí e Nuria Enguita, without a doubt, a crucial moment in Meireles’s career. This in turn led to another important show that took place in 2003, at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contem-porain (The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) in Strasburg, France, cu-rated by Cécile Dazord. From the exhibition catalogue – another turning point in the critical appreciation of the artist’s work – we have selected for this book two essays, both by the British critic and an important international champion of Bra-zilian art, Guy Brett, as well as by the Finnish curator, Maaretta Jaukkuri, who has previously organized an exhibition of Meireles at the Kiasma Museum in Helsin-que, in 1999, for which the artist produced Ku Kka Ka Kka.

Meireles’s monograph, released by the British publisher, Phaidon, on the oc-casion of his anthological exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, in 1999 – and published in Brazil the following year by Cosac Naify – is a crucial moment in the dissemination of his work.8Particularly important from the theoretical and historiographical standpoint is the essay by the critic and curator, Paulo Herkenhoff, a notable interpreter of the essential aspects of Meireles’s oeuvre, as well as of the socio-economic implications linked to the market value of many of his works, and the invisibility of the indigenous question as a taboo topic within the context of Brazil’s historical identity.9The republished essay by Lisette Lagnado offers a reading of Red Shift, in the light of Herkenhoff’s curatorial concept for the 24th Biennial of São Paulo in 1998, in direct dialogue with Herkenhoff’s approach.

Moacir dos Anjos is another important voice and frequent interpreter of the artist’s more recent works, in the context of repositioning the geopolitical South within the global order. Dos Anjos curated the exhibition, Babel(2006), at the Vale Museum, in Vila Velha, Brazil – in whose catalogue this essay was first published – and the co-curator of the 29th Biennial of São Paulo in 2010, which included Meireles’s Lampshade, presented for the first time on that very occasion. Further-more, the texts by Lynn Zelevansky, Sônia Salzstein and Suely Rolnik, hitherto unpublished in Brazil, come from the Tate Modern Gallery catalogue, an important critical document of the artist’s production. Finally, the previously unpublished essays by Diego Matos, co-editor of this book, completes the critical compen-dium, picking up on many of the questions raised in the other works, through the prism of the concept of deflagration. Matos’s essay revolves around some of the reflections from his doctoral thesis, “Cildo Meireles, Space, Usage,”defended at the Facuty of Architecture and Urbanism, at the University of São Paulo, in 2014. Guilherme Wisnik, who is also one of the co-editors of this book, was the curator of the project, rio oir, in 2011, and wrote an essay for the catalogue of the exhibitions at the museums Reina Sofia and Serralves in 2013.10

Invited to curate a retrospective of Meireles’s drawings in 2005, Frederico Mo-rais revealed his intention “to consider as drawings all of the artist’s works,” thus gathering annotations, collages, objects, installations and works in most varied forms, under a single integrating idea of drawing. In this way, a drawing is not just a singular activity with a defined end-result but rather, as Morais notes, also an important means to an end; a preparatory tool for other forms of expression, but one that simultaneously preserves certain autonomy as a cognitive process. In the end, however, the temptation “to base the exhibition on the broad idea that ‘anything can be a drawing’ implied that I would need to prepare the largest ret-rospective ever,” Morais observes.11This proved impossible. In the book, our rea-soning is similar, though we exchange the drawing idea for a study as something that integrates origin, process, and end-result in the creations of Meireles’s larger, more complex works.

Published in three languages, and with a complete visual documentation, the current publication aims to reach a wide and diverse spectrum of readers, allowing for new interpretations of a career of an artist who for the past fifty years has not ceased to surprise us, and who continues to be an infinite source of inspiration and reference.

1 Paulo Herkenhoff (org.), Cildo Meireles: Geografia do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Artviva, 2001, p. 20.

2 Insertions in Journals(1970), Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project (1970–), Insertions into Ideological Circles: Banknoteproject(1970–), Insertions into Anthropological Circuits (1971–).

3 In 2003, a montage of the work was presented at the Istanbul Biennial, but this time by constructing new rooms in an empty space, rather than in real buildings on an actual city corner, as was indicated in the original project.

4 Curated by Vicente Todolí and with editorial coordination by Guy Brett, the Tate Gallery exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (macba), and to the University Museu of Contemporary Art (muac), in México City, both in 2009. Cu-rated by João Fernandes, the National Museum of Art Reina Sofía exhibition traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art in Serralves (2013–2014), in Porto, and to the HangarBi-cocca (2014), in Milan.

5 Curated by João Fernandes, the National Museum of Art Reina Sofía exhibition trav-eled to the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (2013–2014), in Porto, and to the HangarBicocca (2014), in Milan.

6 His participation in the collective exhibition, Information(1970), at the Museum of Modern Art (moma), in New York, was at that point an isolated fact, but which in a way placed him in the context of experimental conceptual art of the period. On this occasion, MoMA acquired the series, Insertions into Ideological Circuits(1970–) for its collection.

7 Work made from another project curated by Frederico Morais in 1987–1988: Missões: 300 anos, visão do artista, at Brasília’s National Theater.

8 The exhibition in New York was curated by Dan Cameron, and traveled to the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in São Paulo and then to Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio) that same year, where it was curated by Gerardo Mosquera.

9 As we explained earlier, this text is not being included here, due to its wide circulation and being largely well known. See also by the same author, “Cildo Meireles, or about forgetting Brazil”, in the catalogue, Cildo Meireles: Brazil’s Geography, for the exhibi-tion that Paulo Herkenhoff curated at the Museum of Modern Art Aloísio Magalhães, in Recife, in 2001.

10 See Guilherme Wisnik, “Substracted value as profit” in João Fernandes (org.). Cildo Meireles. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2013.

11 Frederico Morais, Cildo Meireles: Algum Desenho (1963–2005).Rio de Janeiro: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, 2005, pp. 18–20.

espaços virtuais: cantos

1967–1968 / 2008

32 × 23 cm

Virtual Spaces: Cornersis a series of 44 projects drawn on graph paper and carried out partly in the scale 1:1.

espaços virtuais: cantos

1967–1968 / 2008

3,05 × 1 × 1 m

Tridimensional objects based on the drawings. Wood, canvas, paint and wooden floor.

Volumes Virtuais

1968–1969 / 2013

Virtual Volumesis a series of ~120 drawings (28,8 × 39,3 cm) and pieces made with cotton thread attached to walls, ceilings and floors, forming perimeters, defining volumes, and planes. In a few cases, the shadows are painted with slight differences in tones.

ocupações

1968–1969

Occupationsis a series of drawings for volumetric occupations of space. Executed partly in wood and canvas in the exhibition sites.

Drawings

32 × 47,7 cm

Graphite and paint on graph paper.

Piece

Ocupação I

1968–1969 / 2004

3 × 5 × 4 m

Piece in painted wood and canvas.

arte física

1969

Series of 11 studies in graphite, paint, and collage on graph paper measuring 32 × 45 cm. Physical Artseries is a grouping of projects and works – some carried out, others never presented, and still others impossible to be carried out – which deal directly with the subject’s spatial sense, in relation to physical and human geographies,as seen in Brazil’s territorial, social, and historical contexts. Four of these ideas have been concretized.

Arte Física

Mutações geográficas: fronteira vertical (Yaripo) 1969 / 1998–2015

Physical Art: Geographical Mutations: Vertical Frontier: the artist proposed to remove approximately 1 cm of earth from the very top of Pico da Neblina, the highest point in Brazil’s territory, replacing it with a larger piece, of kimberlite – a volcanic rock that may contain diamonds. More than 45 years after the action was proposed, it was carried with Edouard Fraipont on the occasion of the 34th Panorama of Brazilian Art at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo.

Arte Física

Caixas de Brasília / clareira

1969

Physical Art: Brasilia Boxes /Clearingconsists of 3 cubic boxes made of plywood measuring 30 cm. In an open area close to Lake Paranoá, in Brasília, a space is delineated with stakes and rope. A part of the woods is set on fire, creating a clearing, and a hole is dug up. The ashes and the dug up earth are deposited inside two of the boxes, which are then placed inside the hole. The rest, together with the stakes and the cords, are placed inside the third box. The work consists of the combination of this third box, a panel (90 × 60 cm) with photos of the action, and a map of Brasília (60 × 80 cm) showing the action’s location.

Arte Física

Mutações geográficas: fronteira Rio − São Paulo

1969

41,4 × 42 × 42 cm

Physical Art: Geographical Mutations: Rio – São Paulo borderis an action that entails collecting earth from the frontier municipalities of Paraty (Rio de Janeiro) and Cunha (São Paulo), and depositing it in a leather box. Inside the box a diagonal division with two pockets makes it possible for the earth to be simultaneously separated and mixed.

Arte Física

Cordões / 30 km de linha estendidos e recolhidos

1969

8 × 60 × 40 cm

Physical Art: Cords /30 km Extended Lineis an action that entails extending 30 km of industrial rope along the coast of Rio de Janeiro. At the end, the material is collected inside a wooden box that contains a map where the action took place.

Cruzeiro do Sul

1969–1970

9 × 9 × 9 mm

Southern Crossconsists of a wooden cube that contains two adjacent sections: one in soft pine and the other in hard oak, both considered sacred in the cosmology of the Brazilian Tupi, due to their ability to generate fire by friction. Installed, the work occupies a space of minimum 200 m2.

Introdução a uma nova crítica

1970

150 × 50 × 60 cm

Introduction to a New Criticismis composed of a wooden chair with nails in its seat and with a canopy of black netting supported by an iron frame. The artist refers to the works Cadeau, by Man Ray, and Nests, by Hélio Oiticica.

Tiradentes: totem-monumento ao preso político

1970

2,5 × 2,2 × 2,2 m

Tiradentes: Totem-Monument to the Political Prisoner is an action carried out in the exhibition Do Corpo à Terra[From Body to Earth], in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais). During the week in which the military regime commemorated the historical revolt in the state of Minas Gerais – Inconfidência Mineira –, the artist affixed to the floor, on a white sheet, a wooden post with a medical thermometer at its tip. Ten live chickens were tied to the post, doused with gasoline, and set on fire.

inserções em circuitos ideológicos

1970−

Insertions into Ideological Circuitsis a series of works that consist in recording information, instructions and critical notes on everyday objects – bottles and banknotes –, and returning them afterwards to their ordinary circuits. It only takes place when activated and carried out by the public. The work deals with the ideas of production, distribution and information control.

Projeto Coca-Cola

Returnable soft-drink bottles, which, after instructions and critical opinions are recorded on them, are returned to everyday use. In this case, the artist used water decals. This is a metaphor of the Banknote Project.

Inserções em circuitos ideológicos

1970–

Projeto cédula

Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Banknote Projectconsists of paper banknotes which, after being stamped with instructions and critical opinions, are returned to everyday circulation. The ink-stamp is applied directly on current-day bills.

Vladimir Herzog, 1975

The work refers directly to the journalist, Vladimir Herzog, assassinated under the military dictatorship, and whose death was officially declared to be a suicide. The image of his supposed hanging circulated as such by the press. The case of Vladimir Herzog is a prime example of the violence and terrorism lived in Brazil’s state of exception perpetuated by the military regime between 1964 and 1985.

Amarildo, 2013

The work makes direct reference to the disappearance, between July 13th and 14th, 2013, and the subsequent death of Amarildo in Rio de Janeiro. The bricklayer was abducted by the military police from his home in the shantytown of Rocinha and never returned. The case became a symbol of the abuse of authority, discrimination, and police violence in Brazil, particularly by the current military police.

Inserções em Circuitos Antropológicos

1971–1973

Insertions into Anthropological Circuitsis a series of works which correspond to the fabrication, by anyone, of objects analogues to those in market circulation. If in Insertions into Ideological Circuitsthe questioning and understanding of circuits was essential, here the emphasis lies on the idea of inducing behavioral habits.

Token

1971

Consists of explanations on how to make tokens used for public telephones or similar objects, and also the production of such tokens by the artist. The action deals directly with the idea of wear in a circuit of automated systems that can accommodate objects of varied materials and densities.

Black pente

1971–1973

Project in which combs were produced and distributed at market price to black Brazilians. The project’s purpose was to give visibility to and to affirm an ethnic group.

Zero cruzeiro

1974–1978

6,5 × 15,5 cm

Zero centavo

1974–1978

ø1,3 cm

Zero real

2013

6,4 × 14,1 cm

Zero Cruzeiro, Zero Real andZero Cent consist of banknotes fabricated in offset printing on paper, and coins made in metal, equivalent to the actual currency in use at the time. In the banknotes, an image of a Brazilian Indian is printed on the front, and on the back one of a mentally ill person – two social groups that are invisible and historically marginalized.

Zero Dollar

1978–1984 / 2013

6,8 × 15,7 cm

Zero Cent

1978–1984 / 2013

ø1,3 cm

Zero Dollar and Zero Cent consist of coins fabricated in metal and banknotes fabricated in offset printing on paper, equivalent to actual currency used in North-America at the time.

Mebs / Caraxia

1970–1971

18 × 18 cm

A sound research on a compact vinyl record of 7 inches with 33 rpm. The record reproduces sounds obtained by a frequency oscillator and recorded on a four-channel recorder. “Mebs” corresponds to the sounding of a Moebius strip, while the “Caraxia” (caracol + galáxia [coil + galaxy]) to the sounding of a spiral. The work is part of the series, Blindhotland. Edition of 500.

rio oir

1976 / 2011

A sound work composed of a 12-inch vinyl record. On one side, there is a montage of the sounds of water, and on the other of laughter. The title is a palindrome that alludes phonetically to the idea of fluvial flux, of laughter, and hearing (“oir” means “to hear” in Castellan). The sounds were recorded in strategic points in Brazil’s 3 main water basins: São Francisco, Paraná, and the Amazon. Accordingly, the audios from the Iguaçu Waterfalls, the waves of the Amazon River, and the river sources of the Ecological Station of Águas Emendadas, in the Federal District, are featured.

Eureka / Blindhotland

1970–1975

4 × 6 × 6 m

Project and work composed of three main elements: Insertions, 2. Eureka /Blindhotland and 3. Expeso. Its central part is the second element, built for public immersion and interaction.1. Insertions: part of the project that consisted in placing 8 composite figures formed by varying scale between two opaque forms, a sphere and a rectangle, in different sections of newspapers. This action was only partially carried out.2. Eureka/Blindhotlandis an installation in two parts. Eurekaconsists of two identical pieces made of wood, measuring 30 × 10 × 10 cm each, a cross, formed by joining two pieces that appear identical to the others. These two parts are placed on an elevated scale that shows equal weights. Blindhotlandis a wide area contained by an ochre, semi-transparent screen, attached to a metal structure that hangs from the ceiling. In the space there are 201 rubber balls, identical in size, color, and form, but with weight varying between 550 and 1 500 grams.3. Expesois a sound recording heard over 4 speakers that are part of the installation. 8 different spatial situations are recorded and edited, in which 100 identical or different weights / balls of varying weight are dropped from varying heights or positions.

Casos de sacos

1976

Cases of Sackspresents 12 paper bags of the following capacities: 0,5 kg, 1 kg, 2 kg, 3 kg, 5 kg, and 10 kg. The bags form 12 different groupings, each with a different volume but the same weight. They are displayed on a clothesline where each is pinned with 2 pins. The work is part of the series, Blindhotland, and is the opposite of Eureka /Blindhotland.

malhas da liberdade

1976–1977 / 2008

Meshes of Freedomarise from a procedure: “Take a module or a stem; make that stem intercept with other identical ones in its middle and so forth”. As the mesh is made the work gains an open and expandable form.

Meshes of Freedom i, 1976

Custom version of fishing nets made with wool. From one knot two ropes depart and so on.

Meshes of Freedom ii, 1976

Version on paper. The visitor can use glue to make it.

Meshes of Freedom iii, 1977

1,2 × 1,2 m version made with metal edges that together make up a grid structure intersected by a sheet of glass measuring 0,4 × 1 m, which illustrates the mesh’s permeability and the expansiveness of its planes. This specific setting was made for the Paris Biennial.

Meshes of Freedom iv, 2008

Version made of plastic modules presented for the first time in a solo exhibition at Tate Modern.

O sermão da montanha: Fiat Lux

1973–1979

~60 m2

The Sermon on the Mount: Fiat Luxis an environment surrounded by 8 mirrors with the blessings from the Sermon on the Mount(Matthew 5, 3–10) written on their surface. In the space’s center stands a cube made of 126 000 piled matchboxes. The floor around them is covered with black sandpaper, which emits sounds of amplified friction produced by the feet of visitors walking through the space. Five actors playing guards protect the cube. In 1981, the work was carried out for a second time on a smaller scale, on the occasion of the First Latin American Colloquium of Non-Objective Art, at the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín. Since the Colombian brand of matches was called “Refuegos”, the work received a temporary title, Sermon on the Mount: Refuegos.

La bruja

1979–1981

An installation of varying dimensions that consists of a base in the form of a wooden broom leaning against a wall from which numerous skeins unfold in the exhibition spacing, with different materials and lenght acording to the site. In the first version, made for the 16ª Bienal de Arte de São Paulo (1981), the artist used approximately 2 500 km of white cotton ropes. The most recent versions were made up of 1 400 yarns of black industrial cotton.

Desaparecimentos

1982

Disappearancesis a grouping of 10 magic wands, each 1 m high, made from metal and wood and attached to granite bases. The work was conceived as a series of wands with which a magician and an artist make a piece of cloth disappear. In the magician’s sequence, the disappearance is slow and the cloths disappear towards the interior of the five wands. In the artist’s sequence, on the other hand, the disappearance of the cloths happens by reducing their dimensions, until, in the final stage, they are all gone.

Obscura luz

1982

66 × 66 × 22 cm

Obscure Lightis a box-object installed on a wall, and made from white laminated industrial wood. Through a small opening we can see a yellow light from an unknown source that casts a shadow from an invisible lamp.

Desvio para o vermelho

1967–1984

3 × 5 × 10 m 3 × 2,5 × 5 m 3 × 5 × 10 m

Red shiftis an