RODRIGO CASS

The exhibition gathers 12 video-sculptures and 12 gouaches, broadening the artist’s central inquiry into the relationship between the movingimage, the object and architecture. The video-sculptures contain vignettes with synthetic actions that take the artist’s body parts as catalystsfor these interrelations. Images are projected onto three-dimensional polygons wrapped in coloured linen. The execution of repetitive tasksalternates between registers of a quotidian nature and a contemplative-spiritual ethos. In Liberta a pele do espaço (2023), the large bluesurface seems to be a rock wall, whose texture is given as much by the linen’s weave as by the sandy image. A simple touch of the artist’shand sets off a cascade of powdered pigment, enlivening the dormant space and revealing the material’s sedimentary constitution, submittedto the shaping force of gravity. Before a two-tone background in ochre and terracotta, Revolução Permanente (2023) shows the artistscrubbing two bricks together over his feet until they’re buried under the falling dust. In a subsequent inversion, the feet appear upside down,holding up a mound of dirt, tenuously balanced on the soles. The video stages the perpetual transformation of matter in an interplay ofaccumulation and erosion. The gouaches, in turn, take off from fractures, dislocations and expansions of the surface. These abstract-geometric compositions project virtual volumes in space, as pain is interspersed with precise concrete lines, a fundamental piece in the artist’svisual repertoire.

The first monograph dedicated to the artist’s work will be launched in the exhibition context. Organised by Ana Paula Cohen and edited byCobogó, the book features an introduction by the artist himself, as well as essays by Frédéric Paul, curator of the contemporary artdepartment at the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou, and by Ana Paula Cohen.