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Flash Art Int. (1999 - 2001) Anno 32 Numero 209 November-December 1999



Cityscape São Paulo

Adriano Pedrosa - Ivo Mesquita



ARTICOLI DAGLI ALTRI NUMERI

Franz Ackermann
Wolf-Günter Thiel and Milena Nikolova
n. 216 Jan-Feb 2001

Shangai Biennale
Satoru Nagoya
n. 216 January-February 2001

Aperto Albania
Edi Muka
n. 216 January-February 2001

Cecily Brown and Odili Donald Odita

n. 215 November-December 2000

Cai Guo-Qiang
Evelyne Jouanno
n. 215 November-December 2000

Aperto New York
Grady T. Turner
n. 213 summer 2000


Daniel Senise Sem título (O beijo do Elo Perdido) 1991

Laura Lima Sem título [Untitled] 1997-98 performance

Pedro Américo Irezumi em "Ponta de Diamante" 1997

Adriano Pedrosa
São Paulo is the largest city in the Americas, the richest in Latin America, and home to the world's most expensive art exhibition, the Bienal de São Paulo. The city's superlatives are not all grand, and São Paulo is perhaps the ugliest megalopolis in the Western world ironically just a 30-minute-flight from the world's most beautiful one, Rio de Janeiro, with whom it maintains a polite yet enduring rivalry. Here you'll find all the wonders and terrors of a full blown Third
World megalopolis running at high speed and full capacity, the land of contrasts par excellence: the very rich and the very poor, the sophisticated and the precarious, the high-tech and the no-tech, all often enveloped in gray skies and hazy airs. The vigorous cultural and financial center of Latin America, São Paulo is dominated by a powerful advertisement sector, a growing high fashion and design industry, a serious club scene, an eclectic and chaotic architecture, a
voracious real-estate development, and quotidian and kilometric traffic jams.
São Paulo's art circuit has grown significantly in the last decade, reflecting the increasing penetration of Brazilian contemporary art worldwide, the strengthening of the city's institutions and the investment and sponsoring of public and private sectors through a generous law for tax-exemption. However, due to a lack of acquisition funds (at local museums) and critical sites (journals and academia), Brazilian contemporary art remains more seriously discussed in foreign periodicals and more systematically collected by foreign individuals and institutions. In fact, one fears that in the near future the most significant part of the country's visual art production will not be here.
In addition, the local circuit faces a pressing context: it must articulate and inform itself beyond local borders in order to catch up with the world-wide penetration of its art production, something to which only a few local institutions have been able to respond. The dissolution of boundaries and opening up of exhibition and critical sites for Brazilian contemporary art cannot be a one-way street.

Ivo Mesquita
Chief Curator XXV Bienal de São Paulo 2001
São Paulo's curatorial scenario reflects the fragility of its institutions which lack a well defined program and identity. The majority seems to invest in a program centred around young artists and new names. There are of course individual efforts and serious work being done -
such as the Museu de Arte Moderna's curatorial discussion group or the Paço das Artes - which at times mark the presence of a curator in an institution, yet there is nothing assuring their continuity. This problem is related to the economy of the local institutions, depending largely on public funds or support coming from cultural marketing that ultimately prevent long-term
exhibition programming.
Regarding the Bienal de São Paulo, 2001 is its 50th anniversary, and the institution is re-evaluating its role in terms of its Brazilian, Latin American, and international audiences, as
well as providing an important contribution to the debate on the now widespread Biennial model.
The Bienal's educational role needs to be intensified, in terms of the formation of a local audience for contemporary art, the information the exhibition provides for local artists, and
the formation of specialized art professionals. The XXV Bienal will open itself up for interdisciplinarity, expanding and seeking new ways of dissemination, penetration, and action beyond the white cube. Important as it is in the Brazilian and Paulistano context, the Bienal must extrapolate its pavilion and even its time frame, establishing a closer interaction with the city throughout the years, and not just every two, via conferences, publications, archives, documents, etc.