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29/5/2009

Brazil Contemporary

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Three Rotterdam museums show the diversity of Brazilian culture today

Four Rotterdam museums – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Netherlands Photo Museum and Kunsthal Rotterdam – are bringing the rich culture of Brazil to the city on the Maas. Brazil Contemporary – Contemporary art, architecture and visual culture presents every facet of Brazilian culture in three exhibitions, a publication, and a programme of activities.

Brazil is inspiring, astounding, amazing. It is one of the largest countries in the world, with vast cities of millions of inhabitants that defy the imagination. Brazil is also developing at breakneck speed and is one of the economic giants of the future. But Brazil has its downside too: the depletion of the rainforest, the enormous contrast between rich and poor, the favelas. These phenomena are culturally reflected in an exciting cocktail of high and low art, of street art and politically committed art, and of different art disciplines and traditional craftsmanship. Brazilian culture will go to your head.

After the success of China Contemporary (2006), the three museums have decided to join forces again to focus on a country that has emerged as a global player in economic, social and cultural terms within a short period. Brazil Contemporary presents a broad panorama of Brazilian culture and introduces the public to young Brazilian artists, architects and designers.

Brazilian contemporary art is intimately, possibly inevitably, bound up with its past. In the pluralistic history of Brazil, artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) was a seminal figure. Oiticica was one of the most innovative Brazilian artists of his generation and has come to be acknowledged as a significant force in the development of contemporary art. He explored the concept of ‘anthropophagia’ or cannibalization first formulated by Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade in the 1920s. Andrade argued that, with its long history of colonisation and immigration, Brazil’s greatest strength lies in its ability to appropriate and transform other cultures into something new.

In the 1960s, Oiticica produced a series of sculptures called ‘Bólides’ (fireballs). The ‘Bólides’ represent a convergence of all Hélio Oiticica’s previous explorations of the three dimensionality of colour. The series is significant in the artist's oeuvre, presaging the remarkable body of work that he was to produce later in his career. The Bólides vary from simple box shaped constructions with panels and doors which viewers can move and explore to tent or cabin-like structures which viewers can enter. Oiticica was one of the first artists in history who produced installations in which viewers were participants, not simply spectators. Besides the Bólides by Oiticica, Brazil Contemporary presents work by four contemporary Brazilian artists: Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander, Cao Guimarães and Ricardo Basbaum who have gained international renown in recent years. Oiticica’s Bólides creates a context for their work, which still bears traces of the legacy of Oiticica and fellow artist and collaborator Lygia Clark. The exhibition Brazil Contemporary asks whether Brazilian contemporary art can develop a unique identity without falling back on the stereotypes that shaped perceptions of Brazil.

Ernesto Neto: ‘Celula Nave. It happens in de body of time, where truth dances’
Using nylon, Ernesto Neto makes soft, bio-morphic sculptures with a strong sensual presence that challenge viewers to ‘crawl into the work’. Neto’s large-scale, finely detailed constructions are a subtle interplay of light, form and space, filled sometimes with the scent of aromatic herbs and spices to intensify the sensory experience. Ernesto Neto created the installation ‘Celula Nave. It happens in de body of time, where truth dances’ especially for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen for the exhibition ‘Perception of Space’ in 2004. Using inexpensive stretchy diaphanous fabric, Neto created a soft structure that reaches out to people, inviting them to touch the space, enter it and climb it. As viewers enter the installation, gravity seems temporarily suspended; hanging shapes move gently with every touch and movement. Immersed in a continually changing world, sensory awareness is heightened as viewers attempt to gain a grasp of reality, time, the here and now. With this, Neto plays with different kinds of perception: the visible and the invisible.

Rivane Neuenschwander: ‘Continent Cloud’
Rivane Neuenschwander has a rich and diverse oeuvre, working across a variety of media and with highly varied content. Seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling are key aspects of her work. She produces installations, works on paper, photographs and films. Her installations integrate ephemeral – sometimes organic – materials such as fabric, insects, soap, talcum powder or water. In Continent Cloud, tiny polystyrene balls are blown into the air by dozens of ventilators creating constantly changing nebulous configurations. Rivane Neuenschwander’s work explores the disappearance of shapes and the passage of time. In her artistic practice, she subtly enhances viewers’ perceptions and awareness of temporality. Neuenschwander regularly collaborates with artist and filmmaker Cao Guimarães.

Cao Guimarães: ‘Sin Peso’ and ‘Epiloque’
Filmmaker Cao Guimarães makes films and videos that hover between cinema, fine art and documentary. He has won prizes at numerous film festivals. Guimarães makes extraordinary videos with a road movie feel, or detailed observations of a spontaneous incident on a street corner. Brazil Contemporary presents a number of works by Guimarães, including ‘Sin Peso’ and ‘Epilogue’, the latter in collaboration with Neuenschwander.

Ricardo Basbaum: ‘NBP Me, You’
The artist, writer and choreographer Ricardo Basbaum examines human communications in his three-dimensional installations. The installation ‘NBP Me, You’ invite museum-goers to relax, enjoy a conversation or participate in Basbaum’s game of interpersonal communications. NBP stands for ‘New Bases for Personality’, a system developed by the artist as a way of allowing ‘the other’ to participate in his work. Basbaum has been working on the project ‘Would you like to participate in an artistic experience’ since 1994. With repetitive forms – a metal cage or smaller metal fences visitors have to step over – he creates spaces or directs situations to provoke social interactions or experiences. Basbaum integrates the results into texts, drawings and diagrams he publishes on the Internet.

In conjunction with Rotterdam Festivals, the Rotterdam summer will be a more sultry one with Brazilian jazz, films, street art and a special edition of the Summer Carnival.


Contemporary:

Intervention #11 Eylem Aladogan
May 30, 2009 - January 10, 2020

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents Intervention #11, recent work by the artist Eylem Aladogan (1975). The desert landscapes of Utah, Arizona and Nevada arouse emotions of power and fear in Aladogan. These feelings fascinate her and she expresses them in architectural and organic elements. Aladogan is showing recent ceramic and graphic works in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen together with an installation she made especially for the museum.


Image: Ernesto Neto, collection: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

More information: http://www.brazilcontemporary.nl

For more information and applications for illustrative material, please contact Brand! communicatie, Rinske Brand via pers@brazilcontemporary.nl / rinske@brandcommunicatie.nl, telephone: 010 - 218 85 03 of 06 - 21 27 46 61.

Official opening Saturday 30 May 2009

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Museumpark 18-20 - Rotterdam
Opening hours
Tuesdays to Sundays 11.00 to 17.00

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