7/12/2001
Rivane Neuenschwander
Portikus, Frankfurt
The artist has created three independent works for her installation at Portikus entitled "Spell". The central spatial sculpture she displays is a Scrabble game made of cardboard as well as carved oranges and grapefruits inviting the viewers to create their own words. In a series of works on the wall, Neuenschwander spells out the alphabet in the form of spices, from acafrao, black pepper and colorÃfico to zattar.
Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander (1967) has
become one of the most distinct representatives of
a generation of young Latin American artists
emerging during the 1990s. With intellectual roots
in the organic minimalism of the 1970s, her objects
and installations display an intense interest in
the life-cycles and processes of a wide range of
substances, such as dried flowers, snails, rice
paper, desiccated insects, and pepper. With her
keen sense for the ephemeral nature of organic
life, she has produced a series of installations
that seem to capture the materials involved at the
very border between existence and non-existence
producing a sense of frail, ethereal beauty. Her
intense interest in the formal aspects of
collecting and displaying objects may seem to link
her work closely to a minimalist esthetic, but the
central role that the passage of time and the
relentless progress to decomposition play in her
work seems to testify to an older heritage: the
Brazilian Baroque.
Rivane Neuenschwander has created three independent
works for her installation at Portikus entitled
"Spell". The central spatial sculpture she displays
is a Scrabble game made of cardboard as well as
carved oranges and grapefruits inviting the viewers
to create their own words. In a series of works on
the wall, Neuenschwander spells out the alphabet in
the form of spices, from açafrão, black pepper and
colorÃfico to zattar. This results in an alphabet
of aromas which, in their fleetingness but also
their free associations, reveal the conventions of
language as an hierarchical construction of signs,
phonemes, morphemes, words and sentences. In an
especially constructed projection room on the rear
side of the exhibition hall, Rivane Neuenschwander
will additionally show a film in which ants carry
small banners with the inscription "Word" resp.
"World".
The exhibition is supported by the Hessische
Kulturstiftung.
Portikus
Schöne Aussicht 2
D-60311 Frankfurt am Main / Germany
Telephone ++49 (0)69 219 987-60, -59
Facsimile ++49 (0)69 219 987-61
OPENING HOURS
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Wednesday 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
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