SUPER-NATURAL at OLHÃO, São Paulo. Exhibition view.
Janaina Wagner. Lead Sun, 2021. Super 8 film frame, plastic canvas and lead.
150 x 114 cm.
Adriano Amaral. Untitled, 2017. Acrylic, tire fragments, seriema wing, carbon
silicone, and stainless steel tube. Variable height x 17 x 17 cm.
Adriano Amaral. Untitled, 2020. Mixed technique on prosthetic rubber in
frame artist frame. 30 x 24 x 2.5 cm.
Adriano Amaral. Untitled, 2020. Mixed technique on prosthetic rubber in
frame artist frame. 30 x 24 x 2.5 cm.
OLHÃO is pleased to present SUPER-NATURAL, a group show taking place between August 28th and October 30th, 2021. The exhibition brings together artists Adriano Amaral, Nídia Aranha, Vitória Cribb, Débora Delmar, Ilê Sartuzi, Wisrah Villefort, and Janaina Wagner to engage in questions around the speculative dimension of the dissolution of the nature-culture binomial, especially considering the modern heritage of construction of these concepts.
Planned to happen in the first half of 2020 and postponed due to health safety restrictions, the show finally takes place in 2021, being the first exhibition of the space open to the public since 2019, when the show was first thought of.
Invited to write a text in response to the project, Lívia Benedetti and Marcela Vieira identify a relationship between what is presented in SUPER-NATURAL and the universe of the artist Kanye West; perhaps the same juxtaposition between celestial desire and kynicist hyperrealism that Mark Fisher identified in Spaceship, the track he placed to be the heart of the rapper's first album.
In the texts, both by Fisher and by Benedetti in collaboration with Viera, it is pointed out how the material and formal strategies of the works, in the album and in the exhibition, enable the fabulation of the presence of a more-than-human agent, one who does not it is the universal hegemonic subject.
Although the seven artists present in the exhibition cross converging subjects in different ways and, perhaps, primarily because of that, the exhibition creates an atmosphere that questions itself, highlighting the absence of reality even in the artworks itself, rather than affirming from it a new postulate of what is put in check.
SUPER-NATURAL was organized by Ilê Sartuzi, Wisrah Villefort and OLHÃO and is accompanied by a text by Lívia Benedetti and Marcela Vieira.
SUPER-NATURAL
Lívia Benedetti and Marcela Vieira
SUPER-NATURAL sounds like a strange presence in OLHÃO's physical space, juxtaposing distant echoes of what is nature or natural, in contrast to an arid, concreted, and urban exhibition space.
One of the works in the exhibition, by artist Débora Delmar, gives off the odor of newly printed money bills in one of the rooms. In 2012, on the American television program 'Shark Tank,' one of the aspiring entrepreneurs tried to sell his invention 'Liquid Money' to a jury of investors, a perfume with the smell of money. He said he was inspired by a study conducted in Japan that found that spraying this odor in factories boosts workers' productivity. On the other hand, the smell of the dollar can refer to fantasies of supposed commercial transactions in a luxury market, that of art. Thus, even if SUPER-NATURAL takes place in an autonomous artist-run institution, the association with money and success hangs in the air.
There is also a display in the exhibition with latex heads with prints of the faces of nine members of the Kardashian/Jenner family. The clan is a billionaire phenomenon of today's digital age - fame began in 2007 when Kim's homemade sex tape was leaked online. In recent years, the family is primarily known for launching trends in the beauty market, spreading new standardizations in the shape of curvy bodies and sculpted faces: the Kardashian beauty model is ultra-viral in makeup tutorials, plastic surgery, and social media filters. 'The Kardashians,' by Ilê Sartuzi, gives a tangibility to these faces, so well known but flattened by canvases, as has also been a large part of our current mediation with the so-called "real" world.
We are dealing here, however, with remote intuitions about the perception of SUPER-NATURAL, as the those of this text were imagined from a distance, fed by online conversations that allowed us to get in touch with the works and the project through PDFs, 3D models, emails and messages on WhatsApp. SUPER-NATURAL was scheduled to happen in May 2020 but was interrupted by the pandemic and had to be postponed for over a year to become viable. Confronted by this postponement, its organizers, Ilê Sartuzi, Wisrah Villefort, artists who explore digital visuality in their works, and OLHÃO, did not consider using solutions that have become popular in recent months, such as adapting the exhibition, or part of it, to an online format. The exhibition depends on the physical space, but it is constituted entirely virtually - whether in this text, in the choice of works, and in almost all other stages, such as the remote assembly of some works.
We wonder if, in these pandemic times, visitors to the exhibition, wearing their face masks, will manage to let themselves emerge through the apparatus of the white cube, abstracting their discomfort and actually being present in front of the works. Will they seek to distance themselves from other people who enter the space? Will they associate the use of their masks with critical concepts in this exhibition, binomials that may sound opposite but coexist in simultaneous processes: nature and artificiality, synthetic and organic? The health crisis that went through the development of SUPER-NATURAL certainly interests the thought woven by the exhibition. Now, it will be seen from the perspective of the impact of this more-than-human phenomenon, the virus, on culture.
The work of Adriano Amaral (Brazil, 1982) encompasses examining the nature of things – the stuff of the world; itʼs substance, value, materiality, and mutability. Blurring the boundaries between object and space; composition and dispersion; painting and sculpture, Amaral creates site-specific installations, responding to the spatial and architectural elements of the exhibition space.
After finishing his Master's degree in London's Royal College of Art in 2014, Adriano took an art residency in De Atelier, Amsterdam, in 2016 and was granted the Mondrian Fonds Work Contribution Proven Talent in 2017.
His recent exhibitions include solo projects at Witte de With Center (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Vleeshal Zusterstraat (Middelburg, Netherlands), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Germany) and Galeria Jaqueline Martins (São Paulo), Brazil. Group shows include projects in Sixty Eight Art Institute (Copenhagen), Modern Art Museum (Moscow), and Beelden Aan Zee (The Hague, Netherlands).
Adriano Amaral is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.
Nídia Aranha (Itaguaí, 1992) was born in the lowlands of Rio de Janeiro. The artist studied Product Design & Visual Communication (UFRJ) and also works as an art director and researcher in the visual anthropology segment. Her artistic practice involves the construction of subversive visual narratives with fictional + documentary elements, which touch on gender disobedience relations; Critical and speculative design assuming the most varied supports: laboratory devices, prosthetics, and surgical instruments making use of jewelry techniques. Biohacking practices, with performativity and its registers (painting, photography, digital manipulation, and videography) as an affirmation of these experimental scientific methodologies.
Vitória Cribb (Rio de Janeiro, 1996) holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Superior School of Industrial Design (ESDI-UFRJ). Daughter of a Haitian father and Brazilian mother, the artist has been creating in recent years digital and visual narratives that permeate techniques such as the creation of 3D avatars, filters in augmented reality and immersive environments, using the digital environment as a means to explain their investigations and current issues traversed by their subconscious. The artist investigates the behaviors and developments of new visual/social technologies and transposes her thoughts through the immateriality present in the digital. In 2021 "@ilusão," the artist's film and digital installation, were mentioned and gained prominence in reviews such as the XR panel in The Art Newspaper.
Among exhibitions are Futuração (Galeria Aymoré, Rio de Janeiro, 2021) stand out; Disembodied Behaviours (bitforms gallery, New York and Newart.city Platform, online, 2020), The Brazil I Want (Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, online, 2020), AINDAMTNADA (online, 2020), Are you seeing me? Are you listening to me? (Casa Niemeyer, online, 2020), Beginning of the Century (Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo, 2019).
Débora Delmar (1986, Mexico City) lives and works in London, where she completed the Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Academy of Arts. She previously attended the School of Visual Arts in NY. Delmar's work investigates the effects of globalization on everyday life concerning consumer culture and society. She is particularly focused on the societal consequences, such as class issues, cultural hegemony, and gentrification. This is born from the omnipresent influence of the United States in Mexico and in the wider world. Her work examines the contextual value of goods, analyzing their production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. Delmar references corporate architecture, non-places, and multinational chains that utilize homogenized minimalist aesthetics within her installations. These are commonly composed of a variety of media ranging from photographic prints or modified appropriated objects to commissioned hand painted signs and carved sculptures. She often also incorporates immaterial components within exhibitions, such as sound, scent, and situations. The work of Débora Delmar has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, including the 9th Berlin Biennale (Berlin), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City), Modern Art Oxford (Oxford, UK), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
lê Sartuzi (1995, lives and Works in São Paulo) is an artist who graduated from the University of São Paulo (USP). His research involves sculptural objects, mapped video projections, installations, and theatrical plays addressing issues related to the idealized image of the body, often fragmented or constructed from different parts; but also the absence of this figure in proto-architectural and virtual spaces. He participated in exhibitions at institutions such as Videobrasil (2021); Instituto Moreira Salles (2020); SESC (Ribeirão Preto, 2019; Distrito Federal, 2018); CCSP – São Paulo Cultural Center (2018); MAC-USP Museum of Contemporary Art (2017); Ribeirão Preto Art Museum (2017; 2015); Maria Antônia University Center (2019); Galeria Vermelho (2017; 2018, 2019); the three in collaboration with the research group After the End of Art that he has been part of since 2015. He presented theatrical plays performing video-mapping projections in spaces such as Oficina Oswald de Andrade (2018, 2020); Itaú Cultural (2019); Container Theater (2019), and TUSP (2019). Working for more than a year on a specific project, Sartuzi debuted his play without actors' hollow head doll's foam at Firma (São Paulo, 2019). In 2020 he was invited by IMS – Instituto Moreira Salles to produce a commissioned work resulting in the production of a video constructed with computer-generated images (CGI) that dialogues with a late text, Worstward Ho!, by Samuel Beckett. He also held a residency at Olhão (2020), developing another similar video, Night and Day, which was later awarded Itaú Cultural's incentive.
Wisrah Villefort (Buritizeiro, 1989) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Within their work, the artist incorporates sound, sculpture, text, photography, and video in installations and hypermedia works that explore the relationship between nature and capital, considering modernity and colonialism. Institutional collections and commissions include Kadist, France; and Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil. In 2020, the artist participated in the Pivô Research residency program. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Goswell Road, Paris; and GUAVA, Brasília; and group shows at the 14th Curitiba Biennale; OLHÃO, São Paulo; and MASSIMO, Milan. Forthcoming projects include SALTS, Basel; Centre d'art Waza, Lubumbashi; and a residency at La Becque, Tour-de-Peilz, for which the artist was awarded the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Residency Grant.
Janaina Wagner (São Paulo, 1989) works with the relations of limit, control, and contention that human-kind establishes with the world. Searching for contact points between the human character and the constructions that he himself edifies, Wagner investigates the forms and ways that his efforts represent issues that refer to his finitude in itself. Her work aims to present a critical and questioning imagery narrative around the structural, concrete, and subjective human fragility towards the universe that he inhabits.
BA both in Fine Arts and in Journalism, and a middle school video teacher, many of Wagner's references derive from the procedures through which mankind registers and articulates its progress and legacy. Journalism's sociological bias functions for her as a manner of approaching the mechanisms that validate a story as a true one – a constellation of tales, facts, and images. Janaina develops her plastic work in a "decoupage" process, rearticulating images and texts that are already inserted in media circulation.