Geometries

Oswaldo Costa

Oswaldo Costa
A couple of amateurish shots and photomontages from the exhibition I opened yesterday, called Geometries (most original, I know).

The first wall shows five works, all from the 1980s, going from less to more rigid, and ending, perhaps unexpectedly, with a figurative work, not so common in geometric art. The first (Carlos Vergara) is acrylic on canvas, the second (Dudi Maia Rosa) a slab of fiberglass pigmented from behind, the third (Geraldo de Barros) a formica collage, and the last two, contrasting two aspects of the same artist (Dionisio del Santo), are oil on canvas.

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The second wall shows a twenty year span of work by Cassio Michalany, using automotive paints on canvas. Not so easy to see in this dark photo, but the smaller work on the right, from 1987, is a tryptich, whereas the other two, from 1996 and 2007, are tetraptyches (lovely word). When I see them in museums, polyptiches often seem like affectations to me, so one thing I find interesting here is that, while the one in the middle could have been a single canvas with four bands of different colors, the one on the left, being composed of four bands of the same tone of green, can only exist as a tetraptych, so (in that sense) cannot be an affectation.

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The third wall, in contrast, shows only a two year span (1986-8) of oil on canvas paintings by Eduardo Sued, because his best work, for me, was made during this relatively short span.

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The fourth was shows two works by Renata Tassinari, from 1995 and 2003, contrasting the scales. Acrylics.

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A view of the third wall showing the mezzanine.
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Mezzanine far left showing works by Fabio Miguez, Mira Schendel and Carlos Zilio, all of which feature a single line.

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Next come works featuring several lines, drawings by Cassio Michalany and Iran do Espirito Santo, and a photograph by Christina Meirelles.

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Then another photo showing what could be called an example of local vernacular architecture next to a canvas that is the same size as the edification.

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Finally, the "wood section," featuring three works on wood, by Cassio Michalany, Sergio Camargo and Sergio Sister, ending with a Donald Judd woodcut that, with great but perhaps unintentional wit, simply printed the entire block, unmodified.

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The background music for the opening was 100% Béla Fleck & the Flecktones.
 

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What no Zappa?

(Ducking and running...)

Being a modernist fan myself, I can't help but think the "oeuvre" mostly succeeds ("mostly" that is) in architectural spaces with right angles. In other words, there is a repetition of form in both art and housing that works in consort. Large, "simple" expanses of color (note the intentional use of quotations, please) accentuate the space/form, by sheer nature of their echoing of the square(s) they are hanging in.

How that is nuanced (by paint application, layers of color, color choice, medium choice, mnemonic triggers -intentional or not) is what defines for me a piece I like or not. I love big expanses of color by itself and maybe it's just color therapy at work...so what. If the color and it's application work for me, sometimes those two are enough to satisfy. Working for years with brushes of all sizes, qualities of bristle, I could not imagine how satisfying it was to work in large rectangular patches with a house paint roller.

Even though the ab-ex dudes (and a couple of women dudes) were aiming at the sublime through large scale automatic drawings and drippings, as it were (see Franz Kline, Motherwell, Frankethaler, etc.) I don't think their aims at sublimity (sublimeyness?) were in the end a whole lot different from the modernists who consciously made efforts to leave no mark of the artist's hand/brush. Mere flip sides of the coin to me....and perhaps why I appreciate both.

Looks like yet another great exhibition, Oswaldo. Currently wall #2, and the gray painting with the single line hit it for me. Thanks for the tour!
 
Thank you, Joel. No Zappa or Grateful Dead, the twin viruses you have been unleashing upon your guileless Japanese friends, like Europeans bringing diseases to the new world. Or has it been vice-versa? It was you who first called my attention to Fleck with that geometric Edgar Meyer video. The album Little Worlds really hooked me, with a full band and the winning Gaelic/Jazz/Bluegrass fusion.

What you wrote meets my reckoning too. The architectural spaces obs. reminds how minimalism was as much about generating conscience of surrounding space, and how your body feels inside it, as about the formal qualities of the object. For objects to do that, they have to somehow deflect the viewer's vision away from the object and out into the surrounding architecture (which needn't be right angled - minimalism has worked well for me in the Goog, as have expanses of color).
 
Yeah, that Edgar Meyer stuff is glorious, indeed. Not bad for a traveling bassman. Bela too is a monster, but the technical edge diverts my attention to the potential poetry in the music...as did Return to Forever's stuff, god bless them all for over-active imaginations. Save the babies and toss the bathwaters

This is why minimalism/modernism has a place of it's own....and to me, a completely different approach to the form and medium than Bela. Must have been an interesting contrast.I could imagine several musical options, so it must have been a fun few bottles of wine surmising what soundtrack to apply. Maybe try some Howlin' Wolf next modernist show?
 
This is the track for me. Was just listening to it with a co-worker on Friday talking about how much we love it. We've both tried to get it in a couple commercials over the years to no avail, yet.

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