ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA 'FAIR TRADE' IN SAO PAULO, AN EMBROIDERY COLLABORATION WITH GALLERIST LUISA STRINA AND A TEXT BY KIKI MAZZUCCHELLI

Quilt (ivory), 10 x 360 x 360 cm, concrete, foam and metal, 2011


Quilt (Sahara), 6 x 363 x 363 cm, concrete, leather and metal, 2011








embroideries by Luisa Strina in collaboration with Alexandre da Cunha


Mrs. da Cunha, Luisa Strina, Alexandre da Cunha at the opening of the exhibition


novos paulistas, Guilherme Altmayer, Cassia Tabatini, Alexandre da Cunha


trio gustoso: da Cunha, Fabio Kawallys and Marcos Farinha


Heloisa Lo and Erika Verzutti

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA
FAIR TRADE
19 FEBRUARY - 26 MARCH

Alexandre da Cunha will exhibit embroideries made in collaboration with Luisa Strina and a series of new sculptures. The exhibition takes place in the new space of the gallery: Rua Padre João Manuel, 755

In his work, Alexandre da Cunha appropriates objects, material and citations from traditionally distinct registers in order to transform them through a process of collage of different elements. This operation usually begins with ordinary objects found in any day-to-day existence, which are appropriated, recombined and finally inserted into a new hierarchy of value. By bringing these objects into the universe of art, the artist removes their original function, whilst at the same time raising questions related to value, circulation, intentionality, among others. In many cases, he also alludes to specific styles or movements recognised by official Western Art History, thus creating – with (self)-critical humour - a hierarchical short-circuit.

In the embroideries presented at the Fair trade exhibition, we find this very collage procedure, which includes elements from the show title right to the complex network of references which these works activate. Fair trade is a type of certification that has been increasingly used in so-called developed countries to designate the products acquired from emerging countries at sustainable prices, in which the producer receives adequate remuneration, with the aim of correcting the exploitation promoted by conventional international trade. In this case, the artist casts his own dealer, Luisa Strina, in the role of producer: it was she who, one by one, stitched the embroideries shown in this exhibition over a period of two years, by hand. However, this is not merely an attempt to reverse a certain power relationship or to underscore a supposed relationship of exploitation between dealer and artist, – as this would be a very simplistic way of addressing the intricate network of relationships that permeates the contemporary art circuit today - but a much more complex operation which promotes an oscillation between the many roles she assumes: artisan, artist, dealer, artist’s assistant.

An activity such as embroidery is normally associated with women who engage in housekeeping tasks and do not have a professional occupation; an image which greatly contrasts with the figure of an entrepreneurial dealer and independent woman. These objects therefore promote the encounter of two profoundly distinct worlds.

There is also another aspect at stake in this series of works, which is also related to a process of appropriating a historical art style, taking place precisely in the incorporation of a feminine skill, giving it another dimension in relation to previous works. This something is present in Mira Schendel’s Droguinhas, in Eva Hesse’s malleable pieces, in Louise Bourgeois’ fabric works and even in Lina Bo Bardi with her appropriation of popular knowledge from the Brazilian Northeastern handicraft, configuring a kind of non-linear genealogy of a certain appreciation on the part of these female artists, of the smallness (not in a derogatory sense) and impermanence of ordinary things as well as their incorporation of techniques conveyed mainly within a feminine universe.

The logic of embroidery is taken to a larger scale, thus becoming tapestry, and determining the constructive procedure of the concrete sculptures that are shown in the exhibition. The construction made up of industrial concrete bricks employs the artisanal method in which they are laid out one by one over the gallery floor. These pieces create a rigid structure, a kind of canvas or grid which is woven by the contrasting softness of other materials such as foam.

In Fair trade, Alexandre da Cunha once again uses the mundane and the popular, this time in the form of female craftsmanship and its developments in art history, bringing these into the universe of contemporary art in a kind of tribute combined with the critical humour of someone who recognises how the revolutionary potential of this production has already been exhaustively co-opted by the art circuit.

Kiki Mazzuchelli

http://www.galerialuisastrina.com.br/exhibitions/da-cunha-2011.aspx

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA, PAINTED BY DANIEL SINSEL, IN THE COVER OF THE MARCH 2011 OF FRIEZE

Alexandre da Cunha, painted by Daniel Sinsel in the cover of the March 2011 issue of Frieze Magazine for sale at Koening Bookshops. Daniel Sinsel's exhibition can be seen at Chisenhale Gallery until March 13.

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA: CONCRETE BLANKET AND SAND CLOCK

Alexandre da Cunha, Quilt (raft), 2011
Concrete lintels, woolen blanket
10 x 155 x 150 cms, 3 7/8 x 61 x 59 ins





Alexandre da Cunha, 1345041010, 2010
concrete, sand and glass bottle
44 x 20 x 20 cms, 17 3/8 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 ins

as seen at exhibition at vilma gold, london

'PRIMEIRA E ULTIMA, NOTAS SOBRE O MONUMENTO' CURATED BY RODRIGO MOURA AT LUISA STRINA IN SAO PAULO

Alexandre da Cunha (both concrete sculptures), Bernardo Ortiz (wall drawings)


Pedro Reyes (table), Mauro Restiffe (left photograph), Claudia Andujar (right photographs)


Erika Verzutti (starfruits sculpture), Giuseppe Gabellone (left photographs), Matheus Rocha Pitta (gray sculpture), Marcius Galan (far back sculpture), Robert Kinmont (right photographs)


Alexandre da Cunha (both concrete sculptures), Bernardo Ortiz (wall drawings), Jonathas de Andrade (right photographs), Gabriel Sierra (railing)


Laura Lima (long black hat), Marta Minujin (left wall), Gabriel Sierra (black railing), Claudia Andujar (right photographs)


Pedro Reyes (table), Cildo Meireles (right photographs), Gabriel Sierra (black railing)


Gabriel Sierra (black railing), Jonathas de Andrade (photographs)


Lorenzato (paintings)

Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to invite you to the opening of
'Primeira e última, Notas sobre o monumento',
19 September 2010, from 12PM to 5PM.
This will be the first exhibition in the gallery’s new space, at Rua Padre João Manuel, 755, and the last at Rua Oscar Freire, 502, where it functioned for the past 36 years.
Curated by Rodrigo Moura
Alain Resnais & Chris Marker, Alexandre da Cunha, Bernardo Ortíz, Carlos Garaicoa, Cildo Meireles, Claudia Andujar, Deimantas Narkevicius, Erika Verzutti, Gabriel Sierra, Giuseppe Gabellone, Hitoshi Nomura, Jonathas de Andrade, Laura Lima, Lorenzato, Lygia Clark, Marcius Galan, Marta Minujín, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Matías Duville, Mauro Restiffe, Pedro Motta, Pedro Reyes, Robert Kinmont e Tonico Lemos Auad.
20 Sept. – 17 Dec. 2010


Primeira e última, Notas sobre o monumento
First and last, Notes on the monument
Rodrigo Moura

The history of the monument is inextricably linked with the history of sculpture. It is also part and parcel with the history of the winner. In their criticism of these relations, the artists have constructed some of the most interesting works in the last 50 years.

This exhibition is not interested in proposals for new monuments per se, but in the critical reading that the artists have been making of sculpture and of the monument. Artist Marta Minujín, who pioneered the work of deconstructing iconic monuments beginning in the 1970s, presented her Obelisco deitado [Reclining Obelisk] at the First Bienal Latino-Americana (São Paulo, 1978) stripping away the verticality and solidity from the monument’s archetypical image. More than 30 years later, the same image reemerged in the work of Tonico Lemos Auad, but here without the materiality of the object and in the transformation of the terrace of a gallery into a grassy field.

Primeira e última, Notas sobre o monumento [First and last, Notes on the monument] marks the transition between the historic space where Galeria Luisa Strina operated for more than three decades and its new installations, now being inaugurated. It thus proposes an homage to the gallery’s past, while also pointing to its future – in this temporal movement that is characteristic of the monument’s construction.

Modern sculpture saw the incorporation of the pedestal as part of the work itself, opening the way for sculpture’s nomadic condition. The base is the world. This principle appears in Erika Verzutti’s infinite column, a mention to Brancusi and made of starfruits. Other artists are interested in using the pedestal itself as a sculptural body to be investigated, as Marcius Galan is doing in his work in progress.

As could not be otherwise, sculpture plays a central part in this exhibition: Gabriel Sierra has created a work that occupies virtually all of the gallery’s new space, proposing a kind of urbanism for it, a path-design within the curatorial project; Alexandre da Cunha has revisited the concrete monument on the basis of appropriation, collage and re-signification of urban fixtures; Pedro Reyes’s sculpture proposes an effort of construction aimed at destruction – circularly – as in the myth of Sisyphus.

In the work by Giuseppe Gabellone, the sculpture appears exclusively for the camera: once it is photographed, it will be destroyed, its materiality remaining only in the image. Matheus Rocha Pitta’s proposal would be inglorious, were it not ironic: remaking the Wall of China, out of paper and in miniature scale. The works by Carlos Garaicoa are small sculptures in paper where the old and the new (not so new) come together and clash. Laura Lima has created an inverted pedestal, a space to be “worn” by the spectator, a gala article of clothing for the inauguration.

Robert Kinmont, a yet little-known historic artist, presents a series of photographs documenting an action carried out in 1967, where the body is overlaid to the landscape in shots of verticality and concentration, a solitary monument. In Tardiology (1968—69), Hitoshi Nomura investigates the decadence of the monument, induced by the passage of time and the elements, in an act that orchestrates sculpture, performance and photography.

Bernardo Ortiz works with drawing on the border between facsimile and the document, bringing together series that allude to a stroll through the city, but also an analysis between real space and abstraction. In the drawing of Matías Duville, we see what is nearly a representation of land art: a negative, entropic space, between construction and the ruin, between the natural landscape and that created by man.

The work by Claudia Andujar, one of the most active photographers over the last 50 years in Brazil, functions within the exhibition as a kind of connecting thread: aerial images of São Paulo that show the city from a certain distance, transforming it into a deceptive reality; images of a deserted (post-apocalyptic? still under construction?) Brasília that we hardly recognize, consisting mainly of land and sky; the photo of a Yanomami funeral rite.

Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato witnessed the 20th century discreetly from his open-air studio in the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. A nearly invisible artist in the history of Brazilian art, he is fundamental for the construction of this exhibition. His paintings portray an imaginary Brasília; a housing complex in the suburbs (for the minimalists, a reinvention of the monument); paired sculptures by Amílcar de Castro and Franz Weissmann; an automobile cemetery. Monuments captured from a distance.

Photography appears recurrently in the exhibition, whether in the documentation of anonymous roadside monuments in the work by Pedro Motta, or to compose narratives of great events in history, as in the image by Mauro Restiffe of Obama’s emblematic inauguration ceremony; or in less great historical developments, such as the semi-abandoned modernist building depicted in the work by Jonathas de Andrade.

The photographic documentation of the work Tiradentes: Totem-monumento ao preso politico [Tiradentes: Totem-monument to the political prisoner] (1970) by Cildo Meireles refers to a crucial moment in art history, where the artist leaves the institution to make a monument consisting of an ephemeral action with a long-term impact: the burning of animals. A brutal criticism of the Brazilian military regime and its practice of arresting and imprisoning those who opposed it.

The video by Deimantas Narkevicius revisits the history of the 20th century, reinstating it as a farce. We see the taking down of a statue of Lenin, in Vilnius, which in the edited video looks like it were being seen for the first time, rather than the last.

There is moreover a discrete homage to Lygia Clark, an artist who brought about an indelible revolution in our notion of space, by the inclusion of one of her Bichos [Animals], transforming the gallery’s office into an exhibition space.

Les statues meurent aussi [Statues also die, 1953] a milestone in the genre of film essays, co-directed by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, is a manifesto against colonizers' appropriation of African art, a symbolic death of the statues.

The hypothesis of this exhibition is that the monument is an attempt to forestall the passage of time and forgetfulness and, in the last analysis, our own disappearance – in this sense, the monument would be almost a metaphor of the artwork. There is also something erotic in this desire for permanence after death. But this same desire points to the possibility of an imminent end, either as a transformation or as ruin. For every beginning there is an end.

GALERIA LUISA STRINA
Rua Oscar Freire 502, Cerqueira César, 01426-000 - São Paulo SP, Brasil, T 55 11 3088 2471
Rua Padre João Manuel 755, Cerqueira César, 01411-001 - São Paulo SP, Brasil
Visiting hours: Monday to Friday, from 10AM to 7PM; Saturdays from 10AM to 5PM
info@galerialuisastrina.com.br
www.galerialuisastrina.com.br

DON'T BE TROPICAL, DON'T BE A HERO: 'TRISTES TROPIQUES' AT THE BARBER SHOP IN LISBON

The Barber Shop, exterior


Donald Urquhart, ‘Carmen Miranda’ poster, 2010



photograph of Claude Levi-Strauss in the tropics
“Such is how I view myself: a traveller, an archaeologist of space, trying in vain to restore the exotic with the use of particles and fragments”.




Tristes Tropiques exhibition publication, designed by Ana Baliza


exhibition layout plan


exhibiton views (Jean Michel Wicker's 'Pensée Sauvage')


exhibiton views (Runo Lagomarsino's 'Cobogos' and Jean Michel Wicker's 'Pensée Sauvage')


exhibiton views (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's 'SET' photographs and Runo Lagomarsino's 'Cobogo' sculptures)



exhibition views



Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, untitled (SET-janeiro 2010), 2010 printed photographs



Jean-Michel Wicker ‘Ex-Voto-Tto’, 2010 ( two shells, three bits of corals, dental strings, nails, a smile)



Runo Lagormarsino, ‘Cobogos’, 2009, cardboard sculptures on shelf









Jean-Michel Wicker,‘Pocket Posters’, 2010 (various inserts, notes and xeroxes from forthcoming fanzine on Lina Bo Bardi), Le Edizioni Della China, Berlin


tropical wall and mirror at the barber shop


Arto Lindsay, ‘The 1958 Song’, Bossa Nova written for DGF
composed and performed by Arto Lindsay (voice) and Alexandre Kassin (guitar), published+copyright 2009 by Firma Ltd and Esponja Producões






Helio Oiticica,‘Boys & Men’, 1970s, script for an unrealized film to be filmed in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro



Flavio de Carvalho,‘New Look’, 1956, drawing



Patrizio Di Massimo, ‘Ten Little Nigers’, 2009, selection from a series of ink drawings, 29.7 x 21 cm


Elein Fleiss, ‘Jornal do Inverno’, 2010, A4 publication in black&white, printed on recycled paper, edition of 200


Walter Gam, 'Ambiente', book of poems, 2009


Walter Gam's poems and reading stool


Carla Zaccagnini and Mauricio Lupini's videos


Carla Zaccagnini, Duas Margens, (Atlantico), 2003
Video by Sofia Ponte recorded at Praia da Calada, Portugal, on December 5th, 2003, from 4:00 to 5:00 PM; video by Wagner Morales recorded at Praia do Iporanga, Brazil, on December 5th, 2003, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
Duas Margens (Brazil) will be shown at the Barber Shop, Lisbon while Duas Margens (Portugal) will be shown at the same time in Capacete, Rio de Janeiro.


Mauricio Lupini, ‘Read after Reading (BimBom, DibuDuDa, Bada Didi)’, 2006
music videos


Pablo Helguera, ‘He says he is curating a biennial and he wants to know if anyone here does video’, 2009, cartoon


exhibition view


Alexandre da Cunha,‘Nao seja marginal, nao seja heroi’ (after Helio Oiticica), 2009



friendly tropical ferns hanging from the ceiling


The Barber Shop, Lisboa and Novo Museo Tropical present:

Tristes Tropiques
A proposal by Pablo Leon de la Barra
A gran saudade colletiva with works by Alexandre da Cunha, Patrizio Di Massimo, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pablo Helguera, Runo Lagomarsino, Mauricio Lupini, Donald Urquhart, Jean-Michel Wicker, Carla Zaccagnini, a journal by Elein Fleiss, poems by Walter Gam, soundtrack by Arto Lindsay, and documents from the Flavio de Carvalho and Helio Oiticica Archives.
With the support of Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas
Special thanks to Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Julieta Gonzalez and Adriano Pedrosa.
The Barber Shop, Rua Rosa Araújo 5, Lisboa
March 4, 2010, 10PM
http://thisisthebarbershop.blogspot.com/

In memory of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)

Biographies:

Alexandre da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1969, he lives and works in London. Da Cunha’s work plays with everyday utilitarian objects using and re-using objects and stripping them of their original use value and combining them to create new structures. The artist has constructed new works from domestic objects such as furniture, mops, walking sticks, household objects, pots, planters and concrete. Recently he had a solo exhibition at Camden Arts Centre. He has exhibited in numerous group shows including: ‘Ordinary Revolutions’, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, 2009; ‘An Unruly History of the Readymade’, Jumex Collection, Mexico, 2008; ‘Passengers’, Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2008; and the 50th Venice Biennale, ‘The Structure of Survival’, Venice, 2003.

Flávio de Rezende Carvalho (1899-1973) was a Brazilian architect and artist. Carvalho was educated in France from 1911 to 1914, and then in Newcastle until 1922. In Newcastle he obtained degrees in both civil engineering and fine art. Carvalho returned to Sao Paulo in 1922, joining a local construction firm, before designing his own buildings and creating numerous artworks. As an artist Carvalho represented Brazil at the 1950 Venice Biennial. Carvalho was noted for his experimental designs, such as his House at Capuava Ranch. Carvalho frequently continuously created controversy in his time, walking in the opposite direction to a Corpus Christi parade in Sao Paolo. During a warm summer day of 1956, de Carvalho walked from home to his work place wearing a self made unisex suit to which he gave the name of ‘New Look: summer fashion for a New Man’

Patrizio Di Massimo was born in Italy in 1983 and he lives and works in Amsterdam. When young, he traveled to China, Russia and Libya, trips which were fundamental for his education. His work concentrates on removing the historical nature of specific contexts and situations, trying to articulate everything in the present where only mythology finds a place. He uses irony to shift the perspective towards things, in an attempt to separate reality and truth. Di Massimo exhibited recently at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2009; Galleria d’Arte moderna e contemporanea, Bergamo, 2009; and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, 2009.

Elein Fleiss was born in April 1968 in Paris. Since 1989 she organizes exhibitions. From 1992 she published ‘Purple Magazine’ with Olivier Zahm and in 2003 the quarterly ‘Hélène’, followed in 2004 by ‘The Purple Journal’. She now publishes ‘Les Cahiers Purple’ once a year. In 1998 she started doing her own photographic work. She directed and co-directed three super 8 short films, ‘Denise’ in 2001, ‘Lui’ in 2003 and ‘Kumiko’ in 2004. She lives in Lisbon.

Walter Gam is an artist and poet. He was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1983.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in 1965 in Strasbourg, France. Among her recent solo exhibitions are projects for The Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, 2008; MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, 2008; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, Paris, 2007; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, 2004; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2002. She also participated in Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2007 and Documenta XI, Kassel, 2002. Gonzalez-Foerster lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

Pablo Helguera was born in Mexico City, 1971. He is a visual artist living in New York. He made cartoons when he was 12 but then decided that it was not a serious art profession. Today, devoid of any hope for seriousness, and tired of the absolute lack of humour that exists in the art world, Helguera briefly went back to his roots. He has published 10 books including ‘The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style’, ‘Artoons’ and ‘Theatrum Anatomicum (and other Performance Lectures)’.

Runo Lagomarsino was born in 1977, lives and works in Malmö. Lagomarsino participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York in 2007–08, the IASPIS residency at Platform Garanti, Istanbul in 2006, and the Capacete Residency in Rio de Janeiro, 2009. Lagomarsino exhibited in The 7th Gwangju Biennale, Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, Gwangju, 2008. Recent Exhibitions in 2009 include: ‘Report on Probability’ Kunsthalle Basel; ‘Read Thread’ Tanas, Berlin; ‘Free as Air and Water’, Cooper Union, New York; ‘Panorama da Arte Brasiliero’ Museu De Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo; ‘Changing Light Bulbs In Thin Air’ Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York.

Arto Lindsay was born in 1953, Richmond, Virginia, he lives and works in Brazil. Lindsay is a guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He spent his young years in Brazil with his missionary parents and came of age during the Tropicália movement which made an enduring impact on him. In the late 1970s, he co-formed the seminal no wave group DNA. In the early 1990s Lindsay began to rarefy his singing voice and launched a solo career, significantly more oriented toward his Brazilian roots.

Mauricio Lupini lives and works in Rome, he was born in Caracas in 1963. Lupini’s work dismantles the myths of Western modernity via the use of ethnographic methodology. He has participated among other exhibitions in ‘Panorama da Arte Brasiliero’, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2009; ‘Trienal Poligrafica de San Juan’, Puerto Rico, 2009; ‘Tropical Abstraction’, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, 2005; ‘Etnografia: Modo de Empleo’, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. He is currently preparing an exhibition of new works at Periferico, Caracas.

Helio Oiticica was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, he died in Rio in 1980. He was the son of an entomologist who was also a photographer & painter, & the grandson of a philologist & anarchist leader. Oiticica became known in the late 50s and 60s for his colour and spatial works, as well as installation and performance works such as the ‘Penetrables’ and ‘Parangolés’. After moving to New York in 1971, he began incorporating elements from film and theatre to create the environments that he would dub ‘Quasi-Cinemas’. An artist and thinker, he positioned himself between the avant-garde, Brazilian popular culture, and the realities of ‘underdevelopment’ & 'sixties radicalism’, he came to reflect deeply on the issues concerning art, invention, and freedom.

Donald Urquhart was born in 1963 in Dumfries, Scotland. He is a writer, performer and artist. He moved to London in 1984, and established a friendships and collaborative role with Leigh Bowery and embraced the heady drag-performance scene of which Bowery and his circle were pioneering innovators. Urquhart set up the underground club night ‘The Beautiful Bend’, which he ran throughout the 1990s with Sheila Tequila and DJ Harvey; the artwork for the flyers, illustrated booklets, and posters for the club resulted in a number of exhibitions of his darkly humorous pen and ink drawings. Since then he has been exhibiting his drawings of the divas of his obsession. He currently runs a gay bingo night at the King Edward VII pub in London.

Jean-Michel Wicker was born in 1970 in France. He is an artist and a publisher. From 2001 to 2009 he lived in Nice where he was responsible for the ‘Casa Jungle Garden’ and where in 2006, he founded ‘Le Edizioni Della Luna’, now ‘Le Edizioni Della China’. He currently lives in Berlin.

Carla Zaccagnini lives in São Paulo, was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. Zaccagnini is a visual artist, critic and curator. She was the director of the Programming and Curatorial Department of the Centro Cultural São Paulo. She is a member of the editorial board of ‘Número’ magazine. Her work was recently featured at the 28 Bienal de São Paulo. Among her solo shows the most recent are "No. It is Opposition’, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, 2008 and ‘Bifurcações e encruzilhadas’, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, 2008.