This show presents the recent donation made by the couple Maria Apparecida and Hudinilson Urbano, Hudinilson Júnior´s parents, to MAC USP, in memory of their son, who passed away in August 2013.
The proposal of making this donation did not come out of the blue. The couple is aware that MAC USP has always followed closely their son´s career, having exhibited his works in a total of 19 shows since 1982. The Museum´s interest on Hudinilson´s work becomes even more evident during MAC´s New Building opening process: out of the six shows housed in this building, two present works by this artist.
MAC USP, intermediated by its curator Helouise Costa and myself, was asked to choose some of Hudinilson´s works out of a set of pieces previously selected by his parents, who were advised by Professor João Spinelli, a good friend of Hudinilson Júnior´s family as well of this Museum (and a connoisseur of Hudinilson Júnior´s work). Thus, the works chosen to be donated were selected according to the following criteria: contribute to further enrich the Museum´s current Hudinilson collection; include pieces from different phases of the artist´s career as well as his early works – which represent embryos of his mature poetics; and, finally, gather works whose formal and conceptual uniqueness expresses both the original nature of his work and its synergy with the contemporary debate.
As for the curatorship of this show, it aims, first of all, at pointing out the complexity of Hudinilson´s artistic practice, which includes various modalities and pushes boundaries. The exhibition is based on the figure of Narcissus, which was very important to Hudinilson, and demonstrates how his interest on the human body is expressed, either by self-portraits or by means of collage in which the use of the image of other bodies suggest a perception of reality as projection of his own body. The show also puts in evidence how collage becomes progressively more solid and expands as years go by to become one of the strongest characteristics of Hudinilson´s work. In the delicate pieces he created in the end of the 1970´s, in the original xerographic panels (that have never been shown before) or in his collage-notebooks, it is noticeable the artist´s search for organizing his shattered reality by filling the space of the support according to an orthogonal order.
Gladly, the richness of this exhibition, in particular, and of Hudinilson´s work as a whole goes beyond the features that are pointed out here. Hudinilson Júnior: about Narcissus presents in its delicate composition several other aspects that will certainly contribute for an urgent and necessary review of his intriguing and complex work. MAC USP, in the name of the University of São Paulo and aware of its role in the field of arts, thanks the couple Maria Apparecida and Hudinilson Urbano for their donation that comprise this show, for understanding the importance of Hudinilson Júnior´s legacy and for enabling us to share it with our citizens in a public and university museum.
Tadeu Chiarelli
Curator
© 2014 Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo