Based on the works that comprise MAC USP's collection, this exhibition presents two distinguishing characteristics of the art scene over the last decades: on one hand, artist who act upon the world and demand his role as author by creating formal gestures and structures that validate his individuality – a “warm” attitude towards reality; on the other hand, artist who, by means of a “cold” attitude” towards reality, act as if he created a game comprised of ready-made images to which they gave new meaning, either by arbitrarily choosing one image or another or by articulating several images.
Maybe more pertinent than discussing well-known controversies that have characterized the debate on art over the last decades – “figurative art x abstract art”, “lyrical abstraction x constructive abstraction”, “concretism x neoconcretism” etc. – is pointing out the different attitudes that characterize the artist/author and the artist/editor, since they vividly express the crises of Western society, such as, the crisis in art.
The exhibition contains a selection of works by Brazilian and foreign artists that represent the authorial strand in art over the last decades (Ivens Machado and Karel Appel, among others) and by artists who act (or have acted) as editors of the world (Robert Rauschenberg and Regina Silveira, among others). The exhibition also includes artists who put into perspective the idea of authorship by creating collaborative works (José Leonilson and Albert Hien, Shirley Paes Leme, Fernando Lindote and Felipe Cama).
By Tadeu Chiarelli
Curator