29/1/2004
Cildo Meireles
Portikus, Frankfurt
Cildo Meireles' installation entitled Occasion dates back to the early 1970s, but has until today never been realised. It will now be exhibited for the first time at Portikus. Two independently accessible rooms are connected by a large spy mirror.
OCCASION
Cildo Meireles' installation entitled Occasion dates back to the early 1970s,
but has until today never been realised. It will now be exhibited for the first
time at Portikus. Two independently accessible rooms are connected by a large
spy mirror. In the first brightly lit room there is a basin filled with coins
and bills, and there are large mirrors on the walls. The viewers are surrounded
by a spatial sculpture confronting them with both their mirror image and a heap
of openly accessible cash - perceived individually an ordinary sight, but quite
irritating when brought together. The second room is empty and darkened, with
the spy mirror functioning as a window from this side and giving a view into the
first room. While one can observe the other exhibition visitors unnoticed from
here, this view also allows the visitors to give their actions and feelings in
the first room a second thought, shifted in space and time.
Since the late 1960s, Cildo Meireles has repeatedly made money the topic in
numerous works. Ãrvore do Dinheiro (1969) is a stack of one hundred 1-Cruzeiro
bills bundled with a rubber band and placed on a plinth with the inscription
"Title: 100 1-Cruzeiro banknotes / Price: 2,000 Cruzeiros." The pieces Zero
Cruzeiro and Zero Centavo (1974-78), Zero Dollar and Zero Cent (1978-84) consist
of bills and coins produced and distributed by the artist. They all bear the
numerical value zero, thus feigning to be worth even less than the paper on
which they were printed or the metal on which they were struck. Eppur Si Muove
(1991) consists of a process during which Meireles had 1,000 Canadian dollars
changed into British pounds, and then changed into francs, marks, etc. After
several dozen such transactions, the remaining sum amounted to four dollars and
a few cents. With these conceptual works, Meireles succeeds in revealing the
discrepancies between symbolic and actual value, but also in thematising the
arbitrariness of the free market. With the work Occasion shown at Portikus, this
critique is once more expanded by a dimension that can be physically experienced
by the viewer. Is it the shame one feels when seeing one's countenance, is it
the instilled sense of right and wrong and of value, or is it the fear of being
controlled by the secret observer in the adjacent room that keeps one from
taking the money? Occasion deals with a number of further aspects and questions
which have been central themes in Cildo Meireles' oeuvre since the late 1960s:
simultaneity and different concepts of time, the construction of identity and
self-reflection, geographical and architectural shifts in perspective.
Today, Cildo Meireles is one of the most influential representatives of a
generation of artists including, among others, Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio and
Umberto Costa Barros, who made their appearance from Rio de Janeiro in the late
1960s. Brazil's difficult political and cultural situation during the military
dictatorship characterised Cildo Meireles and his colleagues just as much as the
strong influence of the slightly older so-called Neo-Concretist artists, such as
Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clarke and Lygia Pape. These artists were no longer
interested in the passive nature of most artworks encountered in museums, but
rather in an art that involves the viewer in a special way. They developed a
conceptual approach in their works which directly responded to the cultural
circumstances in Brazil. Cildo Meireles' work, however, additionally reveals an
intensive study of Marcel Duchamp, the Dadaists, and concept art in Europe and
North America. By means of very direct formal placements, Meireles time and
again succeeds in confronting viewers with the way they have been socially,
culturally, historically, and politically conditioned. Paulo Herkenhoff
described Meireles work as a poetic theory of society, which raises questions
that pertain equally to political, economic, communicative, and ideological
strategies.
Cildo Meireles (*1948) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
Invitation to a conversation with the press on Friday, January 30, 2004, at
11:00 a.m.
Opening Friday, January 30, 2004, at 8:00 p.m.
PORTIKUS im Leinwandhaus
Weckmarkt 17
60311 Frankfurt am Main
Tel: +49 (69) 219987-60
Fax: +49 (69) 219987-61