French Artists Play with Reality

By Maíra Amorim, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO – 2009 is the year of France in Brazil. The official opening happened last week, with a stunning firework show at the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas under a heavy storm, and it continues with the city’s museums and art galleries holding special commemorative exhibitions.

Such is the case with Oi Futuro. The Flamengo museum opened the exhibit “Meias Verdades” (Half Truths), presenting audiovisual and photographic art work from the French artists Valérie Belin, Sophie Calle, and Pierrick Sorin.

Calle, Belin and Sorin are three contemporary artists who have acquired international prestige by questioning the limits between reality and fiction. Their work will be displayed over the museum’s three floors and the exhibition, curated by Ligia Canongia and Adon Peres, is running until June 28th.

The work of Valérie Bellin is made mostly of large format photos. In “Meias Verdades”, she displays images of young models and machines. “Contrarily to how models work – they are human beings who became apathetic; the machines are presented as dynamics organisms, recontextualized in a world of light”, says Canongia.

Sophie Calle, who represented France at 2007’s Venice Biennale, uses literature, photography, video and installation to play with the memory. The feature film “Double Blind” (1992) can also be seen at the exhibition. It is a partnership between the Calle and the North American Gregory Shepard, which shows a trip from New York to California. They filmed each other telling impressions and feelings, while Calle analyzes what is taking place. She puts herself as an author, narrator and a character at the same time.

The exhibition also has two video installations from Pierrick Sorin, in which he acts and mixes truth and imagination. “Portrait de Ville”(City’s portrait) shows boats navigating over a still landscape. The artist is on every boat, representing 60 different characters who tell stories about the city of Nantes and about life.

Sorin has also directed “Nantes: Projets d’Artistes” (Nantes: Artist’s Projects), a sort of news story about interventions on the public space allegedly made by several artists. But the audience will soon find out that they are all Sorin, again playing with the boundaries between reality and fiction using humor and criticism.

Oi Futuro
Rua Dois de Dezembro, 63, Flamengo
Tel.: (21) 3131-3060
From Tuesday to Sunday, 11AM to 8PM
Free entrance