Exhibition displays Brazil art from the perspective of industrial activity

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to its organizers, the exhibition, curated by José Augusto Ribeiro and assisted by Daniel Donato Ribeiro, presents an unprecedented perspective of the past 120 years of Brazilian art history, examining the numerous ways in which industry has impacted the production of artworks in the country since early last century.

According to the Pinacoteca, the selection focuses on issues internal to the works and discusses the impacts of modern industry on art concepts and social contexts in which such paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, objects, films, and poems were produced.

The organizers explain that the machine is associated both with the notion of the artwork itself as a device and with factories, symbolic sites of modernity, with workers concentrated on assembly lines, heavy machinery, processed and mass-circulated products.

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Three works were produced for the show: Ana Linnemann made “A Mesa de Ateliê 4,2” in which a complex system of mechanical procedures repeats activities performed in a studio by artists; Artur Lescher developed “Riovenir,” a reference to production line conveyor belts, and Raul Mourão made the work “Pilha/torre,” which, through the action of the public, sets a geometric structure in constant pendulum motion.

“Santoscópio=Dumontagem,” by Carlos Adriano, one of the exhibition highlights, is a short film in which Santos Dumont explained the operation of his hot-air balloon to pilot Charles Stewart Rolls in 1901. At the time, the film was made from 1,339 photocards and could be viewed on a cinematographic device called a mutoscope. Considered lost for decades, the record was found by Adriano in 2002, restored and digitized, and then re-produced.

The exhibition also features works by Abraham Palatnik, Cildo Meireles, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Geraldo de Barros, Guto Lacaz, Hans Gunther Flieg, Iran do Espírito Santo, Jac Leirner, José Resende, Julio Plaza Leda Catunda, lole de Freitas, Lotus Lobo, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Mabe Bethônico, Marcelo Cipis, Patricia Galvão, Raymundo Colares, Tarsila do Amaral, Waldemar Cordeiro, Waltercio Caldas, and Wlademir Dias-Pino, among others.