From June 15 to July 13, 2013, Galeria Vermelho is presenting the exhibition Zero Substantivo [Substantive Zero], by Odires Mlászho, one of Brazil’s representatives at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale.
 
Zero Substantivo combines new and never-before-shown works with other already known ones, presented last year at the 30th Bienal de São Paulo, or at the exhibition that Odires Mlászho [1960] is currently holding at the Brazil Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, running until this November, both curated by Venezuelan curator Luis Pérez-Oramas.
 
The exhibition Zero Substantivo represents the natural development of Odires Mlászho’s research since his last solo show at Vermelho, in 2010, Sopa Nômade. At that exhibition, the written word – one of the artist’s main foci of interest – was totally taken apart and reorganized in groups of letters, with the aim of destabilizing the linear logical reading and understanding of each phrase. This procedure, carried out by techniques such as collage, scarification and camouflage, was used in Sopa Nômade to represent the zero degree of language, a “babbling” lacking “clear semantic meaning,” in Mlászho’s words.
 
Zero Substantivo, which uses the same techniques, goes one step beyond the use of language in the matricial sense used in Sopa Nômade. In the new solo show, typography is used to convey semantic meanings which nonetheless lack proper nouns, as revealed by the title.
 
Riverrun (2013), consists of 14 parts that constitute a long phrase, using two different alphabets. To the straightforward and legible type used in one of these alphabets, Mlászho overlays a second one created with archaic and “tormenting” types, difficult to read and understand.
 
In Técnicas Avançadas para Travessias de Espelhos [Advanced Techniques for Mirror Crossings] (2013), the artist resorts to Letraset, a technique seen in some of his previous works, to create drawings on camouflaged backgrounds of images appropriated from magazines. In Plast White (2013), Mlászho scanned logotypes and created visual poems with them.
 
Pontos Cegos Móveis [Movable Blind Spots] (2013), a work created originally for the exhibition Dentro/Fora, in the Brazil Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, uses protection sleeves for 120-mm photographic film to present 16 different forms of the letter Y. Film protection covers were chosen for this artwork in light of the complexity of information printed on their surface, as well as the role of this material in the photographic process.
 
Zero Substantivo also features the works Ploter Palavra [Word Plotter] with a set of works from the Livros-Moles [Soft Books], Livros-Mochilas [Knapsack Books], and Partituras para Instrumentos Quebrados [Musical Scores for Broken Instruments] series.
 
Odires Mlászho – Selected solo shows: Sopa Nômade, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, 2010; Riverrunreverseflash [12º Cultura Inglesa Festival], Centro Brasileiro Britânico, São Paulo [2008]; O.D.I.R.E.S., Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo [2006]; Fotomontagens Paulistanas, Espaço Nossa Caixa, São Paulo [2004]; A Palidez Iluminada – Foto Arte - Museu de Arte de Brasília – Brasília [2003]. Selected group shows: DENTRO/FORA, 55ª Bienal de Veneza [Pavilhão Brasileiro], Giardini Castello, Veneza [2013]; XXX Bienal Internacional de São Paulo: A Iminência das Poéticas, São Paulo [2012]; Facetime, On Stellar Rays, Nova York [2012]; Geração 00, SESC Belenzinho, São Paulo [2011]; De viaje - Instituto Cervantes, Rio de Janeiro, Roma, Praga [2009]; Recortar e Colar - CRTL_C + CRTL_V, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo [2007]; Veracidade, Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP], São Paulo [2006].

Espera
Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima
 
Besides being the forerunner of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp was also a great chess player. In the solo show Espera, Gisela Motta (1976) and Leandro Lima (1976) present the 2013 work Contra Duchamp [Against Duchamp], a series that reenacts 21 chess games played by Duchamp in the beginning of the 20th century. The games are reproduced in animations made with LEDs, based on the game notation codes. Motta and Lima’s aim here is not to so much to make an exact representation of the games, but rather to reveal the player behind the great artist.
 
On benches displayed on the exhibition space an image of a seated person – revealed only by the projection of that person’s shadow on the floor – suggests tiredness and impatience. The installation Espera (2013), from which the exhibition gets its name, creates an interplay of shadows of two people, suggesting that it is impossible for them ever to meet.
 
In Captcha [2012] phrases taken from a dialogue of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick, were digitally distorted into the patterns of CAPTCHA: an acronym for the expression “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.” The texts were produced by industrial embroidery machines programmed by a computer. In the film, the astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole find themselves at the mercy of their shipboard computer, which becomes increasingly human and begins to control their spacecraft.
 
In each video of the installation Plan Y [2008-2010], a battle tank searchs for its opponent moving on two distinct landscapes. They perform a constant search for its opponent but once they never meet the war seems to be meaningless.
 
Gisela Motta e Leandro Lima – Selected solo shows: SOPRO, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB RJ], Rio de Janeiro [2012]; ANTI-HORÁRIO, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo [2012]; Dial M for murder, Centro Cultural Britânico, São Paulo [2009]; Foreing Element, Hiap Project Room, Helsinque [2007]. Selected group shows: Bouillants #5, Vern-sur-Seiche, Bretagne [2013]; Nam June Paik Award 2012, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Bochum [2012]; Território de Contato, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo [2012]; 8ª Bienal do Mercosul: Extranatureza, Porto Alegre [2011]; 17º Festival Internacional de Arte Contemporânea SESC_Videobrasil, Sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo [2011]; Höhenrausch 2: Bridges in the Sky, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz [2011]; Constructing Views,New Museum, Nova York [2010]; 5ª Bienal VentoSul: Água Grande: Os Mapas Alterados Curitiba [2009]; 2º Prêmio CNI SESI Marcantônio Vilaça para as Artes Plásticas, Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar, Fortaleza; Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ], Rio de Janeiro; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba; Centro Cultural Palácio da Justiça, Manaus [2008].

The extensive work of Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) may not be very well known in Brazil, but when their paper lamps are shown, one can hardly fail to recognize them, as they are familiar objects in many households all over the world. The artist - son of a Japanese father and an American mother and who lived most of his life in the United States - was notable for his multidisciplinary production, a subject matter that mobilizes today’s world.
 
‘In search for a redefinition of sculpture, Isamu Noguchi’s work traveled across the making of objects, industrial design, urban planning, set design for theater and dance, public sculptures and Land art,’ explain Matt Kirsch and Dakin Hart, the curators of the exhibition that Instituto Tomie Ohtake brings to Brazil.
 
Organized by Noguchi Museum, located in Long Island, New York, in the former studio of the artist where all 44 works are from, the exhibition introduces the various facets of a creator who never belonged to a particular movement, yet managed to introduce and anticipate contemporary aspects into modernist concepts in his robust production. In addition to his famous paper lamps that spread throughout the world, Noguchi was also known for the furniture, designing sculptural furniture pieces. The exhibition encompasses drawings, design pieces and sculptures in various materials such as, among others, ceramic, marble, wood, granite and bronze.
 
Noguchi has an extensive production in sculpture, relying on blanks taken from nature or other materials with sophisticated forms, next to Brancusi, with whom he worked. He expanded his activities into landscaping, in which his work pieces have become referential monuments to their spaces. ‘Several acquaintances and cooperative efforts - especially related to the visionary Buckminster Fuller, the choreographer Martha Graham and a number of architects and designers of the postwar period, among them Louis Kahn – provided inputs that eventually deepened his thinking about the role of sculpture in the world,’ say curators.

Brazilian architecture seen by great photographers
Curated by André Correa do Lago, Arquitetura Brasileira Vista por Grandes Fotógrafos [“Brazilian Architecture Seen by Great Photographers”] follows up on series of exhibits on Brazilian architecture that have been organized by Instituto Tomie Ohtake since 2010. The first was Viver na Floresta [“Living in the Forest”], curated by Abílio Guerra, then Julio Katinsky conceived of O Coração da Cidade - A Invenção do Espaço de Convivência [“The Heart of the City – The Invention of the Space of Coexistence”] and now, the ambassador and expert scholar on the theme, author of the book Oscar Niemeyer – An Architecture of Seduction, presents the country's milestone works through the lenses of big name photographers.
 
According to Correa do Lago, talented photographers are important architectural critics, since one must get to know and analyze a work in order to attempt to explain it through images. “It is in this sense that the photographer, as Lucien Hervé says, has to distill the ideas of the architect,” the curator adds.
 
With 28 artists, eleven of which are Brazilian, the exhibition includes French and American photographers, as well as one Canadian, one Argentinian, two Germans, two Italians, one Swiss, one Spaniard and one Ukrainian: Angelo Serravalle, Bob Wolfenson, Cristiano Mascaro, Dmitri Kessel, Fernando Stankuns, Francisco Albuquerque, Ge Kidder Smith, Hans Gunter Flieg, Iñigo Bujedo, Jean Manzon, Jorge Machado Moreira, Leonardo Finotti, Lucien Clergue, Marcel Gautherot, Massimo Listri, Michel Moch, Nelson Kon, Paolo Gasparini, Patrícia Cardoso, Peter Scheier, René Burri, Rob Crandall, Robert Polidori, Romulo Fialdini, Thomas Farkas, Todd Eberle, Virgile Simon Bertrand.
 
Divided into two parts, the exhibition, in its first section, brings together 18 buildings which have had a great influence on the country and the world. The idea is to display works that were documented by great photographers, both Brazilians and foreigners. Meanwhile, in the second part, the curator sought to present only stairways and ramps, not only because they present one of the biggest challenges to architects (and photographers!), but also because some of the most beautiful stairways and ramps of the 20th century were built in Brazil.
 
“This exhibition is dedicated to the photographers who have helped us to discover, appreciate and eventually love architecture, and to the public which has demonstrated more and more that they identify photography and architecture as two of the most remarkable artistic manifestations of the 21st century,” Correa do Lago states.

We are pleased to present Uma hora e mais outra [One hour and yet another], a solo show by Marina Rheingantz at Galpão Fortes Vilaça. The show features 15 oil paintings, where the artist blends antagonistic elements, which can be images, styles or colors. In this new body of work places of passage, desolate landscapes and sublimated memory emerge like the components of a collage.
 
Marina has taken the exhibition’s title from a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade. More than a reference or inspiration for her production, the title points to the artist’s process of creation. Based on photographs or her own memory, these canvases are constructed and deconstructed layer by layer, one hour after another in her work in the studio.
 
The artist continues to explore fragmented images and haunting landscapes, as in Fisherman, in which a seemingly deserted village is portrayed from a distance in green and orange tones, or in Crossroads, where a bluish-gray draft of a road network covers the landscape painted below. The show also includes works where by the process of erasing the artist reaches abstraction. In the canvases Chuvisco and Chuvisco II it is no longer possible to identify any element that recalls a landscape or object; the layers of paint are overlaid forming large fields of color, retaining only the memory of the real.
 
The interplay with abstraction is also seen in Romã [Pomegranate], the largest work in the exhibition, which shows an abstract red pattern suspended in the center of the canvas, floating over a rural landscape that also contains sketched depictions of light fixtures. This canvas reveals the artist’s desire for experimentation, bringing together dissimilar elements, unusual overlayings, interior and exterior scenes in bold compositions.
 
Marina Rheingantz was born in Araraquara, São Paulo, in 1983. She received her degree in visual arts from FAAP in 2007. She was a founding member of a group of São Paulo young painters, 2000e8, whose entrance to the professional circuit was intensely covered by the specialized media. Her solo shows have notably included one at the Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012) and another at the Centro Universitário Maria Antônia (2011). She has participated in various group shows including, recently, Lugar Nenhum, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro (2013); Os dez primeiros anos, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2012); and the 6th Bienal de Curitiba (2011). Her work figures in important collections such as the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Instituto Cultural Itaú.

Célia Euvaldo (São Paulo, 1955) presents her first solo exhibition in one of the mezzanine rooms at Instituto Tomie Ohtake. Accustomed to paint large-sized canvases, the artist took up the challenge of going beyond these limits, performing an intervention directly on the walls of the exhibition space. Expansive in scale, this site-specific approach follows the artist’s pictorial proposition, known for producing drawings and paintings always in black on white, or using solely one of these two colors.
Instead of brushes, Celia Euvaldo uses broom and squeegee, giving magnitude to gesture and producing different reliefs. Her ‘scans’ take the very ink’s time, which keeps on thinning until her stroke fades away, often using the strength of her whole body. In a text of 2009 on the work of the artist, the critic Ronaldo Brito point outs that “...the ink is concentrated almost uniformly, then sprawls across the surface, or else, accumulates, here and there. The broom and the squeegee actions play alternating roles, stand in opposition to each other, under the rule of a formal law that solely provides for the term of that protocol-free exercise.’ To perform this action, Celia ordered the production of a 120-cm-long broom, which proved ideal to fill in the spaces of the large room occupied by the exhibition.
 
Celia Euvaldo (São Paulo, 1955) has been exhibiting her works regularly since the mid 1980s, having been awarded the 1st prize - Foreign Travel – at the 11th National Salon of Fine Arts in 1989. Between 1988 and 1997, her work consisted primarily of drawing on paper, exploring and stretching the limits of this category. Since then, she has been mainly focused on painting. Among her most recent events, her solo exhibitions held in 2011 at Museu da Gravura [Engraving Museum] in the City of Curitiba, Paraná state, and at Lemos de Sá Gallery in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais are worth highlighting, as well as the “Poeminhas” [‘Little Poems’] exhibition at Maria Antônia University Center, in São Paulo. In 2006 an exhibition entitled ”Brancos” [Shades of White] was held at Pinacoteca Station, São Paulo. Participated in the 5th Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, in 2005.

We are pleased to present Jardim [Garden], the first solo show by the artist Lucia Laguna at Galeria Fortes Vilaça. The exhibition features new acrylic and oil paintings, based on the landscape of the artist’s daily life.
 
Lucia Laguna’s painting portrays her surroundings: the landscape of suburban Rio de Janeiro, the district’s informal architecture, the artist’s own studio and the garden of her house. They are slices of the landscape presented in a veiled, nearly abstract way. Shapes, lines and color fields are overlaid with more figurative elements, often giving the impression of a broken mirror.
 
Laguna has developed a unique method, in which images are produced in acrylic paint by her assistants, according to her guidelines, who then completes or deconstructs them using oil paint. They are compositions where it seems that the process of painting never ends, the images remains alive and changeable before our eyes. The painting arises not only from observation, but also from an empirical practice of juxtaposition and reprocessing of everyday images, generating an accumulation of memories.
 
The garden of Lucia’s canvases is urban and characteristic of Rio de Janeiro. It shows itself amid a mix of stones and vases, the hills are taken by houses, and the backyards are full of rubble. In Jardim nº 11, for example, we see only a little table with houses in the background, there is no green on the canvas. The artist leaves large areas covered by patches of paint in colors ranging from beige to yellow, giving the impression of a field yet to be filled. It is an invitation for the spectator to project his/her own images on the accumulation of memories preserved under the mass of color.
 
In Jardim nº 10, a large horizontal canvas, the artist offers us a sweeping personal panorama of the city she inhabits. The green of the plants and trees appears interspersed by sketched houses and vases, as though we were looking through the window of a house in an urban center where everything is always in constant movement.
 
Lucia Laguna was born in Campo dos Goytacazes, RJ, in 1941. She received her degree in language studies in 1971 and began to teach the Portuguese language. In the mid-1990s, the artist took courses in painting and history of art at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro. She held her first solo show in 1998. She participated in the Panorama de Arte Brasileira, MAM-SP, in 2011; the 2005/2006 edition of the Instituto Itaú Cultural’s Programa Rumos Artes Visuais in 2006; and received the CNI SESI Marcantônio Vilaça Prize. Her work figures in the collections of the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro and that of São Paulo, the Museu Nacional de Brasília, among others. She recently participated in the 30th São Paulo Biennial which is currently traveling through the state’s interior.