Crèvecœur

For his presentation at Nova, Art Basel Miami Beach 2017, Clark’s 4 new sculptures draw reference to the endemic formal peculiarities of Brazilian Architectural Modernism. Lit from above by an integrated stage light, they hold the artists experimental scenographic designs for a possible dramatic adapatation of Lucio Cardoso’s masterpiece «The Chronicle of the Murdered House», (only recently translated into English). a text about the dawn of an oligarchic family that owns a large state in Minas Gerais, characterized by the fragmentation and the multiplicity of the private genres of written expressions left by ten first-person narrators characters.

Ad Minoliti’s works created for her participation to Nova, called Cyberselvas, follows a triple process. First, the artist’s mother, as a matriarchial contrepied to the famous father-son relationship in art, works with airbrush to mark out the colored areas. The artist produces then a landscape drawing, evoking animation and children’s illustrations. Machines then start to appear in the process: a camera captures the image, a computer arranges the various drawings into a single landscape and a printer produces the pictures. When this scenography has been installed, the artist paints geometric figures with the aim of reaching a form of communion between humans and machines, inspired by Donna Haraway’s manifesto, thus escaping the heteronormative codes of portrait in the history of painting. Depicting cyborg as a genderless figure, inside fantastical landscapes: a way to lay a trap for our prejudices about gestures, expression and freedom in the history of painting.