Berceuse is an action.
It contextually and formally links the beginning and end of a series of artworks created as a single whole.
Berceuse thus makes a series of four works into a circular sequence, namely: Cruz na América [Cross in America], Concerto para encanto e anel [Concert for Enchantment and Ring], Método poético para descontrole da localidade [Poetic Method for the Discontrol of Locality] and Esquizofrenia da forma e do êxtase [Schizophrenia of Form and of Ecstasy]. Interlinked, by concise poetic or sculptural acts, they establish beginnings and ends of works, constructing a process similar to musical arias.
Arias are structured and delimited musical blocks. When united in a composition, they form a new block, likewise structured and delimited, but a larger and capillary one.
In the visual field, this capillarity generates a volume, which requires an effort of perception from the observer. By linking the previous work (which is no longer “present”) with the current one, a rupture of scale and time takes place – the work now needs to be perceived not only visually.
Berceuse is a project developed over the course 33-34 year period.
In the artist’s view, what structures this project is not the use of organic and inorganic materials. According to him, the principle of this work is its construction on an open scale, defined not by the immediate space of the work, but by the form – a cross, through the realization of four artworks in different landscapes in America (forest, pampa, desert, and seacoast), which are treated as material.
The relationship with time, whether the instant (in the case of photography), or a dilated temporality (in the process on the marble or in the plant-life elements), is fundamental in the interrelationship established among the works.
These two procedures, form-scale and time, create tools that seek to establish a connection between the four actions. Thus, each of them responds for itself while simultaneously suggesting a single whole.
VER VÍDEO
10° 07’ 49” S and 69° 11’ 11” W
This work makes use of a tree and its timeframe, but its main interest is the forest. A tree, in this context, is one among equals; the forest is a full vastness, consisting of many things all similar to one another. Where everything is the same, a unity is created without a reference, the scale is lost, producing a space of a disoriented order.
Near the coordinates 10° south / 69° west, in the Amazonian forest, in the state of Acre, six brass claws were set around a mahogany tree sapling. The tendency is for the tree to absorb the metal, making it disappear within its trunk over the course of hundreds of years, just as the forest has already made this work disappear among its thousands of trees.
The sculpture is guided by two poetics: first, the impossibility of our coexisting with the work in the dimension of time, of seeing it in its completeness (700, 800 years in the making); second, our awareness of the loss, which refers to this referenceless space.
29º 50’ 02” S and 57º 06’ 13” W
A 51-meter-long steel plate is supported on eucalyptus logs set vertically in the ground near the 30° south parallel, with 11 wild fig tree saplings on either side.
At some point in time, between 15 and 300 years, the eucalyptus will rot, and the trees will then support and deform the plane of the steel sheet, and the amalgam created by the organic and inorganic elements will in turn distort the plane of the landscape.
Unlike Grande Budha – the opposite point on the cross – Mesa creates, over time, a reference in the plane of the landscape.
22º 54’ 12”S and 69º 11’11”W
As in the all the work of Cruz na América, in the Atacama Desert, in Chile, the artist uses time as a central material. Here he treats on time as an instant and, therefore, resorts to the photographic process.
Six photos are produced by placing the camera at a point defined by coordinates and taking six shots in predefined directions, with the exposure time defined by the artist’s heartbeat at that moment. The long exposure time, of around one second, and the intense light of the desert result in the photos being “washed out,” “burned,” or “burst.” Randomness interacts in this fraction of a second and determines the overall visual aspect of the photos.
All of the aesthetic solutions of the work, such as the place, the framing, shutter speed and aperture are determined by an a priori decision not determined at the site where the photo is taken, but rather in the artist’s studio.
04º 37’ 52” S and 37º 29’ 27” W
Two points corresponding to the forest and the pampa region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul are connected to form a line, and another line, perpendicular to this one, is extended to the seacoast, seeking for salinization.
At this geometrically defined point a marble sphere studded with iron pins is set adrift in the ocean. Over a long period, the iron will expand, due to oxidation, bursting open the spherical block of marble, just like the photograph overexposure “burns” or “bursts” the photos taken in the desert, opening patches of white in them. On this axis, the two works (of the Vazios) complement one another.
Between 1985 and 2004, Nelson Felix produced Cruz na América, a series of four works made in four different landscapes in South America. Connecting the locations of the works, two by two, with straight lines on a map, a cross is formed whose central point is close to the city of Camiri, in Bolivia.
Concerto para encanto e anel originates from the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of this center and consists of three parts: two exhibitions and a series of sculptural actions made around the world. The locations of the actions are defined by projections from the coordinates of Camiri, and the drawing of this displacement on the globe structures the entire work, indicating the repositioning of the sculptures featured in the initial exhibition. Thus, a single piece is left, which makes the second exhibition
The idea of a circle and of circular time permeates all of this work; it is found in the shape or manufacture of the blocks of marble, in the artist’s movements through the world and, mainly, in the horizontal, inclined and vertical rotation of the beams in the spaces of the two exhibitions.
Between Camiri (Museu Vale, 2006) and Cavalariças (Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, 2009), the artist weaves a sequence of relationships, intercrosses meanings, and deliberately clouds the beginning and end of the works, interlinking exhibitions, sculptures, actions, displacements, angles, etc. Coordinates and locations conceptually inform the exhibition space and, often, position or define qualities of the sculpture, such as its form, material, proportion or rhythm. The result is a series of meanings which, when added together, cancel one another – not by negation, but by excess.
To amalgamate the work, without annulling its limits. The two exhibitions and the series of actions are not isolated works but rather a single whole, like an opera and its acts, or a concert and its parts.
WATCH VIDEO
It is a work concerning space. Its process is similar to books of modern poetry, in which drawings or prints create a relationship between text and image. In this sense, sculptures, drawings, actions, photographs, videos and displacements illustrate a text, forming another notion of place that is submitted to the terrestrial globe.
As expressed by its title, the work seeks to translate an idea of space simultaneously with a poetic construction, amalgamating places through drawing and similar actions. This is what takes place in Grafite [Graphite] (1986), in which the artist positions the piece according to the sun’s axis thus, dislocating its position: it is no longer positioned within a compositional relationship with the immediate space, but rather now represents an a priori, perfect position of the universe. Here, the space created also refers constantly to one place here and another there, that is, a different sort of “here.”
The four works that compose this artwork – 4 cantos [4 Cantos/Corners], Verso [Verse/Flipside], Um canto para onde não há canto [A corner for where there is no corner] and Trilha para 2 lugares [Track for 2 places] – use space in its simplest structure: the corner, the flipside, the center, and the direction. To these elements, the multifaceted observation of our current surroundings is added. Today there exists an intercrossing of physical and nonphysical factors, coupled to this tridimensional environment. These factors include information, meanings, history, hierarchy, time, and so on. Our current space, at least in art, is no longer so clean. This work (and its four acts) combine external and internal environments, but their interest is found in the double and in the triple, as well as in the various meanings created at the exhibition site.
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4 cantos e Verso partem dos termos espaço e poesia. No ambíguo significado na língua portuguesa, com as palavras canto e verso; ora elas adquirem um sentido espacial, ora um sentido poético.
4 cantos (2007/2008) foi realizado em Portugal, a convite da Fundação Serralves, alude à forma retangular do contorno geográfico do país. Um caminhão munck, carregado com quatro blocos de pedra (de seis a oito toneladas cada), percorre os quatro extremos do seu território. Nos três primeiros, em espaços externos, as rochas são colocadas sobre o solo e o artista as desenha incessantemente, apreendendo a forma e o entorno (a própria paisagem), que elas naquele momento marcavam. No último, já em ambiente interno, os blocos são tombados contra as paredes dos quatro cantos da sala expositiva e fixados com ponteiras de bronze onde estavam gravados oito versos do poema “A Casa térrea”, de Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. Juntos, os cantos dos espaços externos, os cantos do espaço expositivo e o canto do poema se imantavam e aludiam a outra escala.
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Verso (2011/2013) nasce da observação de que a cidade de São Paulo (principal centro brasileiro), encontra-se equidistante e sobre uma linha imaginária que liga duas pequenas ilhas, uma no Oceano Pacífico (arquipélago de San Juan) e outra no Atlântico (Ascensão). O artista viaja para as duas ilhas, dois opostos, dois versos – criados no globo terrestre. Nelas, coloca-se numa direção em que o olhar para o horizonte desse a volta na circunferência do planeta até alcançar São Paulo. Nesses dois locais são fincadas três peças de bronze, que remetendo à decomposição das três partes da letra A , em uma homenagem ao poeta catalão Joan Brossa e ao seu poema intitulado “Desmuntatge”. Depois, o artista desenha incessantemente até impregnar-se do local e da paisagem dessas ilhas. Em São Paulo, insere peças circulares de mármore e torna a fincar as três partes da letra A em bronze, no espaço expositivo da galeria. Em Verso, não há um espaço único, configurado em uma sala, mas sim um que remete poeticamente a uma noção espacial circular, de uma escala dilatada até a impossibilidade de percepção física, mas unida por ações similares e pela forma de uma letra.
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Um canto para onde não há canto (2009/2011), feito para a cidade de Brasília, a convite do CCBB, aborda o centro como um local ausente ou onipresente. O centro está onde está o interesse, e não mais no lugar geométrico. Ele parte do princípio urbanístico de que essa cidade “central” não tem esquinas. Traça um retângulo, que envolve os dois eixos do plano diretor e construindo assim quatro cantos ao traçado. A cada um desses locais, o artista leva um vaso com a inscrição de uma das estrofes do poema “La Voce”, de Cesare Pavese, onde se encontra cultivada uma planta sensitiva, mimosa pudica (dormideira). Após tocar a planta e seguindo a sua retração, inicia uma série de desenhos, visando construir nesses locais um cantar poético, pela impregnação da poesia no ato contínuo de horas de desenho. Tudo que foi utilizado nesses quatro pontos é deixado in loco, nada de material persiste ou foi levado. Assim, nenhum objeto consta no espaço interno e expositivo, somente a referência da presença da poesia, do toque e dos desenhos, feitos e abandonados nesses quatro sítios da cidade.
Trilha para 2 lugares e trilha para 2 lugares (1984/2017) se refere a um espaço construído por três ações e unido pelo acaso duma poesia, que usada uma única vez, no início, norteia toda a obra.
Os trabalhos de Método… são pensamentos poéticos sobre o espaço, sendo que a esse quarto trabalho se somou o atual conceito espacial de corda e com ele, acoplado, o som. No museu, um forte estiramento na sua arquitetura indica uma direção, o percurso poético realizado pelo artista no globo. No som, uma trilha sonora, feita in loco para os vídeos elaborados nas ações desse trajeto. É na reunião desses três locais, mas principalmente, onde o trabalho emerge, que recai a atenção. Nesse sítio, um duplo se cria – o museu, como, e é, um instrumento de arte.
“.. é dedicado a Mallarmé e ao seu central poema ‘Um lance de dado jamais abolirá o acaso’”, texto extraído de uma entrevista ao poeta Alberto Pucheu. Lanço um dado, com o número seis em todas as faces, sobre um mapa-múndi, em uma data e hora estabelecidas e em um local incidental do curso duma estrada. O dado, jogado, define seu acaso, não mais pela aleatoriedade do número, mas sim pela aleatoriedade de sua posição indicada sobre o mapa. Os locais do trabalho são firmados nesta ação: Cítera (ilha grega) e Santa Rosa (pampa argentino). Observo depois que vários artistas realizaram obras sobre a peregrinação a essa ilha: Watteau, Gerard de Nerval, Verlaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire (que muito influenciou Mallarmé), Debussy e mas recentemente Theo Angelopoulos. Como uma epígrafe, ou como uma homenagem – um vir ao caso –, defino um terceiro local, o restaurante La Closerie des Lilas, em Paris. Todos, com exceção de Watteau (precursor do tema), frequentaram esse café.
Nos três locais – Cítera, Santa Rosa e La Closerie – lanço, enterro e abandono dados de bronze e desenho compulsivamente. O trabalho é finalizado no MAM do Rio, onde uso o museu, também como um objeto, duplicando assim sua ideia de lugar. Grosso modo, poeticamente, Pucheu…, 3 locais em 2 lugares de 1 mesmo espaço.”
Produced in Portugal, commissioned by the Fundação Serralves, this work alludes to the rectangular form of the country’s geographic outline. A flatbed truck with a built-in crane, loaded with four blocks of stone (weighing from 6 to 8 tons each), traveled to the four corners of the country’s territory. At the first three, in outdoor spaces, the rocks were placed on the ground and the artist ceaselessly made drawings of them, capturing their shapes and the surroundings (the landscape), which they were marking at that moment. At the last corner, now in an indoor setting, the blocks were leaned against the four walls of the exhibition room and fixed in place using bronze spikes on which are written eight lines of the poem “A Casa Térrea,” by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
Together, the corners in the outdoor spaces, the corners of the exhibition room, and the poetic canto [in Portuguese, canto also means “corner”] are magnetically attracted and allude to another scale. Insofar as in Portuguese canto means both “canto” (of poetry) and “corner,” and verso means “verse” or “flipside," 4 cantos and Verso are terms that refer to both space and poetry. In their ambiguous meanings in the Portuguese language, in this work the meanings of the words canto and verso thus oscillate semantically, sometimes having a spatial meaning, sometimes a poetic one.
Verso (2011/2013) springs from the observation that the city of São Paulo (Brazil’s main city) is located precisely in the middle of an imaginary line that connects two small islands, one in the Pacific Ocean (the San Juan Islands) and another in the Atlantic Ocean (Ascension Island). The artist traveled to the two islands, two opposites, two versos (in the spatial sense of “flipside”) – created on the terrestrial globe. At those places he positioned his body to face the direction in which the gaze toward the horizon leads around the circumference of the planet until reaching São Paulo. In both places, three pieces of bronze were staked into the earth, referring to the composition of the three parts of the letter A, in an homage to Catalan poet Joan Brossa and to his poem titled “Desmuntatge.” Afterwards, the artist drew unceasingly until he became imbued by the place and landscape of these islands. In São Paulo, he inserted circular pieces of marble and again staked out the three parts of the letter A in bronze, in the gallery’s exhibition space. In Verso, there is no single space, configured in a room, but rather one that refers poetically to a circular spatial notion, of a scale dilated up to the impossibility of physical perception, but united by similar actions and by the shape of a letter.
Made for the city of Brasília, commissioned by CCBB, this work approaches the urban center (downtown) as an absent or omnipresent place. Here, the interest is on the center, no longer on a geometrically defined place. The work is based on the urbanistic principle that this “central” city does not have corners. The artist traces out a rectangle, which involves the two axes of the overall city plan and constructs the four corners of the outline. To each of these places, the artist brings a vase in which a sensitive plant, a Mimosa pudica (touch-me-not) is growing . The vase bears the illustration of one of the strophes of the poem "La Voce," by Cesare Pavese. After touching the plant and following its retraction, the artist begins a series of drawings that seeks to construct a poetic song in these places, through the impregnation of the poetry in his continuous action of hours of drawing. Everything that was used at these four points was left onsite; none of the material was taken away . Thus, no object exists in the internal exhibition space, only the reference of the presence of the poetry, of the drawings, made and abandoned in those four places in the city.
This work refers to a space constructed by three actions and united by chance in a poem, which is used just once, at the beginning, but guides the entire work. The works of Método... [Method…] are poetic thoughts about the space, and the current spatial concept of a rope was added to this fourth work. Sound was also added to it, coupled to the rope. In the museum, a forceful stretching of its architecture indicates a direction, the poetic course taken by the artist on the globe. The soundtrack was made onsite for the videos produced in the actions of these travels by the artist. The viewer’s attention is focused on the joining of these three places, but mainly, on where the work emerges. At this site, a double is created: the museum is like – and is – a tool of art.
Trilha.. [Track…]. is dedicated to Mallarmé and to his central poem “A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance” (a text excerpted from an interview given to poet Alberto Pucheu). "I throw a dice, with the number six on all its faces, on a world map, at an established date and hour, and at an incidental place along the course of a road. Although the thrown die defines a quality by chance, it does so no longer by the randomness of the number, but rather by the randomness of its position indicated on the map. The places of the work are defined by this action: Cythera (a Greek island) and Santa Rosa (in the Argentinian pampas). I later observed that various artists have made works about the pilgrimage to this island: Watteau, Gerard de Nerval, Verlaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire (who greatly influenced Mallarmé), Debussy, and, more recently, Theo Angelopoulos. As an epigraph, or as an homage – a case in point – I define a third place, the restaurant La Closerie des Lilas, in Paris. All of them, with the exception of Watteau (a pioneer of the theme), frequented that restaurant. In the three places – Cythera, Santa Rosa and La Closerie – I throw, bury and abandon bronze dice and draw compulsively. The work is finished at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) of Rio de Janeiro, where I use the museum, also as an object, thus duplicating its idea of place. Roughly, poetically, as stated by Pucheu, it is "...3 locations in 2 places of 1 single space."
This work has its scale, if I can put it that way, composed of three places: the first in an action at two points in the Americas – and thus continental. Later, in a piece installed at an outdoor space (for a single day at the spring equinox) at a building in the city of São Paulo, and, last but not least, the translation of this process into the sculptural language in an indoor space, in a series of sculptures made for the building of the Bienal de São Paulo.
Here, the perception of the exhibition space is characterized by a tangle of questions that are often disparate and even schizophrenic. The notion of space includes poetry and drawing, in this sense; sculptures, objects, photographs, actions, geographic coordinates, or even displacements construct a weave, which does not fall only within the immediate location where the work is installed. The nature of this space is not purely concrete; it has a poetic meaning as its basis. Its reference is not based only on the metric dimension. It is charged with perceptions, meanings, history, feelings, desires, memories. The viewer must make an effort. The work requires time, for the observer to probe it, in order to perceive its complete construction. To make it, the artist went to two places in the Americas: Anchorage, in Alaska, and Ushuaia, in Argentina – “the beginning and end” of two mountain ranges that can be considered as one (the sum of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes); they are seen, poetically, as a spinal column of the terrestrial globe. In these places, he chooses the position of the two parts of the sculpture that he installs in the building on the street 9 de Julho in São Paulo. This exaggeration of articulated elements gives rise to a notion of landscape, an idea of space in which they are blended; a natural space, poetic operations, and a constructed space.
