Reviews

Jorge Orta Life Nexus in the U.K.: A question of Heart

2-27 October 2001 University Gallery, University of Essex

Gabriela Salgado

Experiment/ Experiência: Art in Brazil, 1958 - 2000

MoMA, Oxford. 28 July - 21 October 2001

Isobel Whitelegg

Jorge Orta. Life Nexus in the U.K.: A question of Heart

Gabriela Salgado

Gabriela Salgado is the Curator of the
University of Essex Collection of Latin America Art

Life Nexus is an evolving interdisciplinary project combining art, science and philosophy by process of co-creation on an international scale. It demonstrates Jorge Orta's belief that art's relationship with society should be challenged and investigated. He believes that art must serve as a bond and that the artist's job is to link us together. To this end, this project focuses on the human heart at both a literal and a metaphorical level: as a human organ - raising public awareness of scientific issues such as organ donation and transplantation and as a metaphor -in the caring sense of 'have a heart', in relation to empathy and feelings

Since 1996 Life Nexus has evolved as a community-based project around the world. In each location the project reveals shared and new interpretations based on the heart. In the UK a further dimension has been considered: with increasing number of immigrants and asylum seekers on the move, social and ethnic displacement is a prevalent issue. People are being transplanted into a new environment and need to find acceptance here if they are to survive. The heart becomes a symbol of solidarity and the potential site for social harmony: human tolerance and understanding in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies

Throughout spring and summer 2001 and in collaboration with firstsite @ the Minories, the University of Essex organized workshops that explored issues raised by the symbol of the heart. Participants came from all walks of life, including school children, scientists, students, artists, community groups and health workers. These workshops led to the making of two podia or tribunes, that can be used as both mobile sculptures and archival units of Life Nexus material. The podia are made available for speakers to present their views about heart donation and heart transplantation in public performances. The workshops also lead to the making of an edition of silver papier-mâché hearts that will represent Colchester in other venues around the world

Over the summer; firstsite @ the Minories organized an exhibition of previous work made for the Life Nexus project as it circulated around the world, and of material from the local workshops. This show allowed insight into the historical development of Life Nexus as well as work in progress

To coincide with the end of the exhibition a public life Nexus event was organized: 70x7. A simple meal was organised in the gallery to bring together those involved in the project as well as opening it to new audiences. The meal constituted a another development of Life Nexus. The notion of 70x7 is taken from the biblical expression meaning infinite, the possibility of multiplication of a meal that permits communication and sharing of a communal space around a table. The intention is to transform the symbol into reality by organising several meals for an infinite number of people. The dinner was served on dinner plates design by for the occasion by Jorge Orta and laid out on a 70 meter table cloth depicting Life Nexus Imagery

The last stage of the project is the exhibition in the University of Essex art gallery inspired by the work of all those who contributed to the workshops in Colchester.

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Experiment/ Experiência: Art in Brazil, 1958 – 2000

Isobel Whitelegg

Last year, the association BrasilConnects organised the vast history of Brazilian art in a large-scale exhibition in São Paulo, under the auspices of the Brasil 500 celebrations. The period addressed by MoMA’s show, which borrows from the Contemporary section of the São Paulo Rediscovery Exhibition, is comparatively focused. The show is loosely chronological and largely successful in achieving necessary balance between unfolding the history of the works included and allowing them to assert their independence. Experiment/ Experiência uses the suggestive semantics of its title to examine how artists in Brazil have critically explored the physical and conceptual boundaries of artistic practice: both in terms of an experimental attitude towards from and material, and of a sustained examination of subjective experience, particularly that of the viewer.

The exhibition opens with works selected from the late 1950s, each artist engaged in individual battle with conventions of scale, form and scope with diverse results. In the case of Mira Schendel’s Droguinhas a combination of the spare materiality of soft Japanese paper and the minimal, repetitive gestures of twisting and knotting adds up to sculpture, while Lygia Pape’s Livre da Arquitectura reduces the monumentality of architecture to the diminutive scale of the book. The negotiation of a space within the confines of abstract art for the viewer to get physically involved is suggested by a select representation of works by Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. In the case of both artists, early paintings and wall reliefs are contrasted with later works that can be handled by a spectator/participant. These include one of Clark’s series of Bichos: articulated sheets of metal which can be manipulated into a range of possible forms, and three of Oiticica’s Bólides: boxes containing colour in the form of a variety of organic and synthetic materials. This sense of progression from painting into three dimensions and beyond fits comfortably inside a historical exhibition. The alternative significance of seriality as a mode of production, particularly central to the work of Sérgio Camargo and Mira Schendel, proved more difficult to appreciate from the limited works on display.

The idea of participation is extended as the exhibition moves on to the later work of Clark and Oiticica. Here the historical element of the exhibition becomes important. Videos of the artists in action are necessary to retain some idea of the depth of social commitment with which they carried out their artistic practice. First assembled in 1969, Antoni Manuel’s Soy Loco por Ti consists of a double-bed-sized strew mattress with a black blind at its head. Behind the blind, which can be raised using a pull-cord, is a map of Central and South America. Sitting on the straw with the blind/canopy raised creates a feeling of improvised shelter. It is successful as a very sociable art work for the simple reason that it is difficult to enjoy alone: in order to lie back and enjoy this feeling of shelter to the full, it helps if somebody else is holding on to the blind’s cord. Using the number of people spotted with straw on their backs as a barometer, this piece also seems to have been the most successful in encouraging participation as an activity rather than an idea.

In later works, the viewer is returned to a singular presence and materiality is replaced within memory and imagination. Although Tunga’s Mon noM (2000) – a combination of glass, lead, natural sea sponges, felt, and billiard balls – is not intended for the fingers, this subtracts nothing from its tactility. Without the confirmation of touch, doubt and illusion prove a powerful force: a tension between the actual and the apparent that is reiterated in the piece’s quasi-symmetrical form. Nuno Ramos’ Manorá Branco (1997) similarly plays with the expected characteristics of familiar materials. Marble is associated with monumental scale, and on first appearance it would seem to be what this large rectilinear slab is made from. Manorá Branco is in fact a large quantity of Vaseline with only a thin sheet of marble protruding from its surface like a veneer. At the base of this from, the appearance of Vaseline is again transformed, taking on the characteristics of melting wax as it oozes over the floor

Experiment/ Experiência presents an exciting picture of its given period. In terms of both the most recent works and those from earlier decades, curatorial focus on sculpture and installation achieves a strong sense of contemporaneity, furthered by an excellent selection of film works from the 1970s to the present on display in the gallery’s education room. Hopefully, the interest in art from Brazil that this show stimulates will not be short-lived. Several of the artists included have been recent subjects of major retrospectives elsewhere in Europe and this exhibition puts forward a strong case for British audiences to be afforded opportunity for the same experience.

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