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The Persistence of the body
As the first event in the Collection Exhibitions Programme, following the opening of the Iberê Camargo Foundation, the curators have made use solely of works in the institution’s collection in pursuit of a selection that can offer the spectator a multifocal view through contact with the selected works. Developing this viewpoint, the curators present the visitor with an expanded range of possibilities for each to construct their own network of meanings.
In addition to this objective was also a concern that this exhibition should consider the complexity of Iberê Camargo’s output, without providing an overview. In view of these aims, we have chosen three approaches for developing the curatorial thesis: 1) figuration centred on exploration of the human body; 2) painting and drawing; 3) the 1980s, making use of the work entitled Fantasmagoria IV as the ignition of a range of aesthetic relationships which implode the boundaries of chronological linearity.
Considering the route through the exhibition as a visual essay, we also emphasise the fact that the arrangement of the drawings and paintings in the space does not follow any chronological criterion. On the contrary, works are arranged according to formal, aesthetic and thematic analogies, sometimes seeking to provoke a sense of unfamiliarity by relating works with quite distinct ideas or from different periods. This can be noticed in the set of drawings on the same theme – the female nude – separated by a period of forty years, yet which when placed next to each other produce an intriguing dialogue.
The underlying concept therefore brought in a significant group of drawings – often pictorial – which, when placed alongside the paintings, aims to contribute towards a greater understanding of Iberê Camargo’s work and career. From this came the choice of connecting studies, sketches, preparatory drawings, unfinished paintings, such as the canvas of Gelson Radaelli, and works considered by the artist as finished products capable of facing the demanding eyes of his peers and the public. In front of these drawings and paintings one can reflect on the persistence of Iberê Camargo’s investigative processes, on his assault on the support, on the manifest expressiveness of the gesture, on the search for form without falling into empty aestheticism.
On the other hand, the spectator may perhaps question the absence of printmaking, a process for which Iberê Camargo was equally recognised, as one of the key names for this technique in Brazilian art. As this exhibition adopts a narrow selection in relation to the extensive collection of the artist’s work, and added to the fact that the last exhibitions and the recent Catalogue Raisonné deal with the area of printmaking, the curators have taken this opportunity to focus their attention on the drawings. These are seen as works that reveal the excellence of the artist’s graphic work, which without doubt rebounds into his paintings, particularly the Fantasmagoria, Personagens and Manequins series.
At times Iberê Camargo’s figuration remained dormant, which can especially be seen when the spools, through which he first became recognised in the 1960s, lost all trace of identity. In contrast to the constructivist-leaning formal abstraction dominant among Brazilian artists at the time, Iberê was recognised for his painting’s association with abstract expressionism. It was a label he shunned, claiming never to have abandoned the figure. This stance is confirmed by the fact that the artist’s return to Porto Alegre in the 1980s coincides with his use of figuration, in a free and dynamic material treatment of colour and intense gesture, which situates him as a key figure in this field and favours the proximity of a new generation of artists seeking their routes through painting.
It is highly important to bring to the public the multiple possibilities of viable interpretations each time Iberê’s collection is “worked on”, whether through an isolated work or in a group, since it can awaken new ways of seeing for novices and more experienced eyes alike.
It is worth pointing out that, in becoming the first space in Porto Alegre to be built in response to its cultural heritage, the Iberê Camargo Foundation also accepts the obligation of winning over its occasional visitors to make them assiduous users of this cultural space.
Ana Maria Albani de Carvalho and Blanca Brites
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