Convergence is not equalization: Singular views on space.

On lines, membranes, and boundaries

Photographs by Cléo Alves Pinto, José Roberto Bassul, and Michelle Bastos.

(wall text)

The greater and more complex the relationships in which we recognize the inevitable interdependence and correspondence, the greater the pleasure that such recognition awakens in us.

Mario Pedrosa, 1951.

We can say that this is an exhibition configured as a “common ground.” By casting our gaze upon these three photographic series, we notice points of convergence that emerge amid the poetic singularities each photograph embodies. Finding such clear points of confluence between the works, as we witness here, is noteworthy, especially since they emerged as a result of a portfolio selection process conducted by a diverse group of photographers, which could signal either a symptom of the times in the field of Visual Arts or an interesting coincidence. Or both.

However, converging does not mean equalizing, because that would lead to a neutral field; instead, it suggests moving toward a place where, from a point of encounter, associative and interpretative possibilities for the image radiate, prompting us to reflect on its discursive heterogeneity.

In these photographic series on display, there is a poetic investigation surrounding space, where the photographers, taking their own conceptual and aesthetic stances, interpret the vast area that encompasses it through perspectives that engage with the archive, ethnography, architecture, and formal aspects that compose the object/context to which the gaze is directed.

How do our three photographers react to this condition of being immersed in the spatial vastness that encompasses everything, full of variability, yet connected to a world where one aims to be as close as possible to the tangible and the seemingly credible?

By questioning the supposed solidity of the world, the photographer points to the imponderable and invents possible places.

What does living hold? In Cléo Alves Pinto’s extensive series of photographs, composed of 509 images of the front facades of residential units in the 700 blocks of Asa Sul, signs of ways of life emanate from objects (inhabitants?) and their spatial arrangement, revealing themselves, to a greater or lesser degree, to the eye. Silently, the camera lens introduces its gaze into the interior of the homes, narrowing the distance to the intimate unknown, entering the space where the inhabited is absent and showing us only what the Other allows. From the collection of images, Cléo’s classifications emerge, arrangements determined by gradations around what is hidden and what is revealed. Photo-objects for/from the archive.

In José Roberto Bassul’s work, the image also borders space, but not as a membrane that permeates the intimate and public spheres, as Cléo does, but as a means for deconstruction and reflection on the material aspects common to everyday and urban life. Following the procedures typical of modern photography, Bassul captures various construction barriers—his object of focus—highlighting them from their functional and ephemeral state and granting them a new place as images. By establishing associations between the barriers and other objects, and maintaining a consistent format to ensure unity within the series, the photographer invents a grammar of his own, in tune with the trans-territorialized strategies of photographic language.

There is also the gaze the photographer casts on what is inhabited but is on the margins, distant from the large urban centers, becoming, through artistic investigation, a cultural and aesthetic force. Like an image anthropologist, Michelle Bastos begins a study that intertwines visuality and society. Adopting a perspective similar to that of traveling artists, the photographer moves between seven municipalities in northeastern Brazil, located in Piauí and Maranhão. In each city visited, typologies are drawn that correlate the paintings on the outer walls of houses with the temperament of their inhabitants. A chromatic inventory emerges, establishing the place where, for the photographer, there was once space. In the color divisions characterizing the paintings on the houses and in the marks time has left upon them, landscapes arise, transforming the photograph into almost a painting.

Renata Azambuja, April 2017.