Abre Alas 14

Allan Sieber, Amador e Jr. Segurança Patrimonial LTDA., Angela Od, Bia Martins, Caio Pacela, Danielle Cukierma, Enorê, Gustavo Torres, Ivan Schulze, João Paulo Racy, Kammal João, Leandro Eiki, Mariana Paraizo, Maxwell Alexandre, Nathalie Nery, Rafael Pagatini, Ricardo Villa, Thiago Ortiz, VAV - Vendo Ações Virtuosas, Yoko Nishio

Curated by Clarissa Diniz, Cabelo, Ulisses Carrilho

Abre Alas Open your Wings

It is a totally new start, another restart, so it is that art recreates itself, cyclical, self-inventing itself, launching itself into the challenges of the day, or our era, historical, political, revolutionary challenges! New ideas and new proposals can appear, paths, questions, answers, ideas, colors, shapes, meanings... The poetry that happens every day, every second. ATTENTION! How can we grab it? How can we put it on paper, in the exhibition space? ... Hmmm this word can be boring... In the room, the gallery, the street, the world, who knows. At Gentil, we are certain that Abre Alas is a space for dialogue that is open to everyone. In 2017 we received 357 documents / portfolios with the works, dreams of each artist, different languages and ideas that translate what they think and the places the artists come from. This gentle confluence arrived in the hands, eyes, mouths, hair and cells of the illustrious selection committee made up of the artist Rodrigo Cabelo Saad and the curators Clarissa Diniz and Ulisses Carrillo - to see, feel, analyze, discuss, to choose the participants of Abre Alas 2018. There isn’t space for everyone, this difficult mission is inevitable and part of the desirous dialogue of life. The choice is made through a mysterious chemistry that is established between the selection committee. Long live those chosen, and what we can say to those not chosen is to persevere! The same piece of advice that we also give to those who have been chosen, because you have a whole life ahead of you. Harmony-dance-love-boldness with the work that we are doing, as it is a real part of us, of our joy. For those who stay, a dialogue with the space, other artists and the public follows. What will happen, what is already happening with Abre Alas 2018, what will we see, what will we receive, we are eternally curious with the outcomes of this project that we have been cultivating for 15 years.

We would like to thank all artists who sent their art for our blessing, those who were chosen, for their work, the selection committee for engaging in this delicate task, and all of those who are curious to see the exhibition, come!

Abre Alas is a moment, a landing, a song, that embraces us.

Abraços Laura, Neto and Márcio

The works in this exhibition were submitted by Brazilian and foreign artists for Abre Alas 14, which will open on the eve of the 2018 Carnival. Although the exhibition does not configure itself as a conceptually determined show - it is the result of portfolios sent by the authors themselves - it is possible to sense a common temperature.

The lukewarm flesh that recently died, the coldness of refrigerated bodies, the stale air of an enclosed and monitored society, an air of nonsense, of meanings that do not reveal themselves - as with the phenomenon of numbers. Self-contained latex gloves and coins deformed on rails, dissimulated forms on the streets of a crossroad and images projected not for remembrance but in the search for the transitory that leads to oblivion: examples of friction that the artists presented here propose. Languages grappling with various forms of short-circuit, or of exhaustion.

We need to question the status of the objects, the place of things and our willingness to live with them. Finally, question the subjects and their regimes of legitimacy. As with the flags of social movements that, united, transform themselves into a Teresa (for art, inclusively), in this Abre Alas vitalities converge to collectively devour tradition - or, at least, for rumination.

From the most radical proposals of Glauber Rocha, thinking about the strange tropical surrealism - hunger - deduces an aesthetic of violence which arises from the intolerable. In the work of Glauber every order or individual can be submitted to a trance or crises, as they are born of violence. With luck and a healthy and abundant dose of utopia, hunger suffers from transmutations and becomes a metaphor of desire and of the revolution to come. From hunger, violence, the crisis and, today, the coup, that which is “too terrible, too beautiful, intolerable” is revealed. Something that exceeds our capacity to react. As with hunger, images which - although we can feel them and relate to them - we cannot understand.

Clarissa Diniz, Cabelo e Ulisses Carrilho