From August 22 to September 13, 2014, Galeria Vermelho is presenting the exhibition Rosângela Rennó, along with the installation As coisas estão no mundo [The Things Are in the World] by Marilá Dardot. On opening day, Tijuana publishers will release the book Possíveis Volumes [Possible Volumes] by Flávia Ribeiro.

In her solo show, Rosângela Rennó (51) is presenting three new works being shown for the first time in Brazil.

Consisting of six digital prints on pure silk organza, the series Insólidos [Unsolid] (2014) was created on the basis of four images. In the series, Rennó lends continuity to her research into the uncommon aspect of family photographs (which in 2005 gave rise to the series Frutos Estranhos), emphasizing the notion of how the perception of the images is altered when they are displayed on different and unusual supports.

Insólidos reveals images of mysterious places or of curious actions printed on various layers of pure silk organza, giving rise to a three-dimensional effect through superposition. The artist creates an interplay between transparency and opaqueness, between the flat surface of the traditional/analog photographs and the “photographic body,” which nowadays, in the digital era, is bereft of volume.

In the series Operação Aranhas/Arapongas/Arapucas, triptychs are formed based on the association of images made by three different photographers, at specific times and events. Twelve photographs were made by José Inacio Parente during the protest march known as the Passeata dos Cem mil, in Rio de Janeiro, on June 26, 1968. Rennó participates with twelve images made during the demonstration known as the Comício das Diretas Já, in Belo Horizonte, on February 24, 1984. The last twelve were made by Cia de Foto, at the protest called Movimento Passe Livre, in São Paulo, from June 17 through 20, 2013.

Based on three historic moments – the Passeata dos Cem mil (1968) along with the Diretas Já (1984) and Movimento Passe Livre (2013) movements – the new series deals with questions related to mass events. For instance, what makes a crowd change the world, or, at least, part of its histories? What transforms it into a flood that carries and drags everything, without measuring its intrinsic power that turns it into an unavoidable force, able to torment even the most unscrupulous executioner? The masses are made up of hundreds, thousands or millions of individuals who, generally, do not represent a great danger to the system when isolated. However, luckily or unluckily for us, each of them carries an important fragment of the monster’s chain of DNA, which is lost or recovered at another point of the chain, perpetuating the monster’s dynamics and maintaining it at its prime. Terrible and marvelous.

Each photo will be covered by a sheet of embossed tissue paper – as in the traditional interpages of old photograph albums and associated to two other images, realized in the two other events involved in the series. Camera lenses and filters will provide a look at faces in the crowd.

The work created for Rennó’s solo show at the Centro de Fotografia (CdF), of Montevideo (Uruguay), in 2011, entitled Río-Montevideo uses 14 slide projectors to present images made by photographer Aurelio Gonzalez between 1957 and 1973.

In 1973, with the imminence of the military coup arrival of the military coup in Uruguay, Gonzalez gathered more than 40.000 photographic negatives he had made for the newspaper El Popular and hid them between the floors of a building in Montevideo.

This material remained hidden for more than 33 years until it was found and finally recovered by the same photographer, in 2006. Submitted to a long process of restoration, classification and digitizing by the Núcleo de Fotografia de Montevidéu, these negatives reveal a certain “constructed amnesia” that pervades the recent history of various countries of Latin America. Rennó chose to present a small selection of these images through the lenses of the old slide projectors, which lend them a warm, foggy smoothness. In this case, the projectors are used in order to reintroduce these images into the present day in a more playful manner since they establish a direct link with the past, maintaining their symbolic value without, however, tying them to the tradition of the documentary. Besides the projections, activated by the observer, the context of the installation is enriched with the sound of the famous composition of the Communist International.

Solo shows (selection): Projeto Educandaros, DAROS Latinamerica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2013); Strange Fruits, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland (2012); Fiebre, basura y poesía, La Fabrica, Madrid, Spain (2010); Rosângela Rennó, Museu de Arte Moderna Aluísio Magalhães [MAMAM], Recife, Brazil (2006). Group shows (selection): ICA@50 Pleasing Artists and Public since 1963, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia, USA (2014); The Itinerant Languages of Photography, Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, USA (2013); BESPhoto 2012, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal (2012); Elle@centrepompidou: Artistes femmes dans les collections du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2010); 29ª Bienal de São Paulo: Há sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar, Pavilhão da Bienal, São Paulo, Brazil (2010).

As coisas estão no mundo

Marilá Dardot
An installation created by Marilá Dardot (41) for the homonymous exhibition she held at Galeria Silvia Cintra, in Rio de Janeiro, As coisas estão no mundo [The Things Are in the World] consists of 1.5 tons of sheets of paper used for offset printing tests distributed in stacks sculpted to compose the title phrase. Papers used in printing to test the colors and quality of the printing of art books form 20 stacks on the floor. Each stack is sculpted to form one of the letters in the phrase “As Coisas Estão no Mundo.”

In the work, Dardot uses this material normally discarded by print shops, allied to the title of the 1969 song by Paulinho da Viola, Coisas do Mundo, Minha Nêga, to reaffirm that, like everything else that surrounds us, art is in the world, and exists as an object of human perception.

Solo shows (selection): Pouco a Pouco, Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2014); No Silêncio Nunca Há Silêncio, The Wanås Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden (2013); Intervenções VI, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo, Brazil (2012). Group shows (selection): Imagine Brazil (Artist’s Books), Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2013); The Storytellers - The Stenersen Museum – Oslo – Norway (2012); 27ª and 29ª Bienal de São Paulo, Pavilhão da Bienal, São Paulo, Brazil (2006 and 2007).

Possíveis Volumes

Flávia Ribeiro
Possíveis Volumes [Possible Volumes] was created based on cutouts from reproductions of paintings made between the 13th and 16th centuries, by artists such as Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Giotto, Durer, Ticiano, Cranach, and Michelangelo, which are part of the installments of the collection Gênios da Pintura. These cutouts reveal, however, only the folds in the fabrics of the clothes reproduced in the images. The original cutouts were scanned and printed in offset to then be cut out again and glued on the pages of the book.