GROUP SHOW

Setting off from a reflection on new artificial intelligence technologies, the curators propose an intergenerational dialogbetween 16 artists that place contemporary alienation under scrutiny and invite the public to speculate on the production ofsubjectivities through the association of differences. In the words of Duarte and Loureiro, what is at stake is ‘A path in whichthe simultaneously confused and diffuse energies of the contemporary world do not lead us to succumb or adhere to fear, norharden before destabilisation. This unbalance, then, can be elaborated toward the attuning of vital tangles capable of keepingalive an opening of meaning.’

Adriana Varejão’s works reconfigure scientific techniques of population census, submitting them to formal organisation tacticsthat point to the subjectivity and the incessant fluctuation of race signifiers in the post-colonial context of Brazil. This procedureis similar to that of Luiza Crosman, who emulates the visual culture of scientific graphs in her drawings to, ultimately, frustratetheir utilitarian vocation. Negalê Jones and Rebeca Carapiá bring into play invisible dimensions of the artwork, amplifying theenergetic properties of plants into sound waves, in the first case, and installing a field of electrical reverberations between thehuman body and copper in the second. Tiago Mestre’s video installation projects shadows into the gallery, simultaneouslyobscuring and illuminating the surrounding architecture, like Lydia Okumura’s site-specific sculpture, which takes advantageof colours and the corners of the walls to project an impossible polygon into space. Cristiano Lenhardt, Juliana dos Santos andRenata Haar use drawing to give a pictorial form to the exchange between recognisable contours and familiar shapes.

Historical artists such as León Ferrari and Mira Schendel also participate in the exhibition with two sculptures, Untitled(1978/1982) and Droguinhas (1965/1966) that recompose space through lines, emptied volumes and the twisting of differentmaterials. Cinthia Marcelle’s video work, Verdade ou Desafio (2018) and the installation Elo | Link (2023) by Sara Ramo,produces connections between the works in the show, with a revolving triangle that points in different directions, in the caseof Marcelle, or an immense cord of heterogeneous materials, in Ramo’s case. Anderson Borba and Maria Lira Marques presentworks that start from organic elements such as wood and natural pigment to produce composite objects with a skilful andeloquent craft, while the sculptures by Sonia Gomes use sewing as a compositional method for volumes that make theconcatenation of disparate textures a formal principle.