Twelve artists are moving into an old skyscraper in São Paulo, Brazil, and sharing it for two months as they transform the historic building into Red Bull House of Art.
Built in 1920, Edificio Sampaio Moreira was the first skyscraper in São Paulo and stands in the Vale do Anhangabaú, in the heart of the city. The area has already been through a golden age and a spell of decline, and is currently going through a period of revitalisation.
Now one of its central structures has become the Red Bull House of Art, a four-month-long project to celebrate the diverse art and culture of Brazil's biggest city. The project will be overseen by Luisa Darte, art critic and independent curator, as the 12 artists live and work in the building over two terms, the first having started on September 13, ending on October 23, the second starting on November 3 and ending on December 18.
Throughout the project, the artists will share impressions, practices and knowledge with Paulistas while staging exhibitions and installations in a wide variety of media, including photography, sculpture, video, painting, live performance and audio. But the event is not just confined to the Edificio Sampaio Moreira as Red Bull House of Art will be heading out into the huge and bustling city.
The building itself has been adapted to include workshops for each of the artists as well as other rooms for installations, projection rooms and exhibitions, as well as a lounge and an editing/internet room. There will be common spaces for the two main exhibits, the opening and closing of the project, and places for lectures with the curators, art critics and guest artists. The events are open to the public and admission is free.
The first public exhibition will run from October 25 until November 30, and features works by each of the six first-term artists. Then, from December 11-27, there will be an exhibition of all the works created by all 12 artists during their residency in the Red Bull House of Art.
First Term Artists
Henrique César: *1987, São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo. Graduated in Plastic Arts on FAAP, São Paulo. Henrique’s artworks search what is behind the fine decoration which covers our offices and bedrooms. What is going on beneath the wall surfaces, tubings, connectors and all sorts of other things which make the world go round? How can art create a point of focus on what is the most familiar to us, our living spaces, and reveal the unknown in our private lives, which remains under the shadows, totally hidden? These are some of the questions present on Henrique Cesar video installations and paintings.
Adriano Costa: *1975, São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo. Graduated in Plastic Arts at Federal University of São Paulo (USP). Adriano works in the fields of drawing, depicting and sculpture. His concepts depend on the choice of materials: an old book, the supermarket plastic bag, the blanket used by a homeless person, pieces of a pavement, etc. Adriano represents an art full of aggression and urgency. He searches the chaos, which is both the method and source for his poetic art.
Bhagavan David: *1983, Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in São Paulo. Pieces of wood, from different formats and dimensions, found on the streets and taken to David's home/studio, become the support for paintings that transcend the two-dimensional plane of a canvas and meet connections with the three-dimensional around us. On these woods, the artist doesn’t apply oil or acrylic, but car enamel. The choice of strong and opaque colours has the power to make the spectator look closer.
Bruno Baptistelli: *1985, São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo. Graduated in visual arts on UNICAMP. Bruno’s artwork employs a range which starts with painting, includes pictorial interventions in architecture, and ends with street art. He often starts out with scrap materials and rubbish, the first step of what he calls “Urban Reorganisations”, when things we normally don’t pay attention to in our routine find form and place. This way, Baptistelli devotes a special attention to what is ordinary in our day-to-day life and puts a poetic edge to it.
Deyson Gilbert: *1985, São José do Egito, Pernambuco. Lives and works in São Paulo. Since 2006, Gilbert has been part of the “Grupo de Estudos de Crítica e Curadoria da USP”. In his artworks, Deyson exercises his sense of humour by using objects, interventions, collections or, most of the time, a mixture between drawing, collage and appropriation of ideas. He leaves us doubting the origins and the truth of what is in front of our eyes. The art itself appears as a space in which the world is regarded critically, but keeping a distance which keeps the environment an enigma.
Flavia Junqueira: *1985, São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo. Flavia mixes photography, performance and scenographic movements. On first sight, her artworks seems very seductive to the contemporary eye. But beyond the superficially happy and attractive layer lies modern society's imperative to own beauty and to be in the limelight, revealing our innermost fears of friendlessness and loneliness.
Comments
Add a comment