Leme

TOMADA

25 Apr - 02 Jun 2007

Xicara e Brinquedo
© Mariana Manhães
manipulated digital photography. Print on photographic paper.
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
23 x 55 cm
2005
TOMADA

A group exhibition with Mariana Manhães, Eva Marisaldi, Milton Marques and Paulo Vivácqua

Galeria Leme brings together four artists whose artistic productions subvert common forms of making use of technology. Driving away from high-tech and the promise of a world embedded on precision and efficiency, these four artists, always making use of sophisticated mechanical and electronic resources for the construction of their sculptures and installations, make their way through parody, mistake, uselessness and dream.

Mariana Manhães, born in Rio de Janeiro, develops video installations and video objects which make use of image manipulation and which count with the imagination of the spectator as a structuring element. In her work, day-to-day objects are converted into animated beings with their own voice and language; they are no longer mere representations of reality but fantasious products. The artist’s constructions capture our attention by their articulation between high technology and their capacity to improvise. These are mechanical and electronic assembles which assume organic configurations as if they were robots animated by human feelings and idiosyncrasies.

Born in Bolonha, Eva Marisaldi’s work is of difficult classification. Our best chance is to recognize her as a conceptual artist which works with everything from drawing to film. She produces sculptures and installation performances, works which derive from her observations of sociability forms developed in contemporary life. This is the case of “Disco-Party-Theatre”, a complex and fun technical apparatus which resulted from the analysis of venues which holds the notion of a party. In this piece, a “disco-party-robot” dances, emits lights and throws confetti.

The (sculptural?) artwork by artist Milton Marques, born in Brasília, has been gaining body through the assemble of various equipments, mountings where utensils such as lenses, scanners, videos, cameras and books are connected to each other in complex and disparate gears. Each piece is reused in a new story, which suggests an irregular working, although fertile in the revelation of secret aspects of the life of the objects. The constant reference to the book object, for example, renews the idea of the book as a lazy machine, as it requires a reader to put it to work, but also of an object which holds a mysterious and unquiet organism.

Free from the image scope, artist Paulo Vivácqua, born in Espírito Santo, was led to the plastic arts through contemporary music, having sound as his primary resource. Making installations of ambient reach and soundtracks, Vivácqua dedicates himself to the strong imagination potential of his sound resource. Its capacity, in association with the arrangement of speakers in the exhibit space, organized over layers of glass, bringing or not inlaid lights, transport the spectator/listener to another place. The order of the elements which compose his sound proposals in a given area confuses and alternates the perception of such venue.

Agnaldo Farias
 

Tags: Eva Marisaldi, Milton Marques, Paulo Vivacqua