Brazilian colours in Oxford

José Damasceno and The Next Omen (1997)

By the BBC World Service's Manuel Toledo

An exhibition to commemorate the fifth centenary of Brazil has opened at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art.

Experiment Experiência puts together the work of eighteen of the foremost Brazilian artists of the second half of the 20th century, including representatives of the avant-garde Concretist and Neo-Concretist movements that took flight in the 1950s, such as Sergio Camargo, Lygia Clark, and Hélio Oiticica.

Mira Schendel´s Droguinhas (1964/65) and, on the wall, Sergio Camargo´s Relevo (1970)

The generation that started its creative process during the years of the military rule is represented by artists like Antonio Manuel, Tunga and Iole de Freitas.

The exponents of the art of the 1990s include José Damasceno, Jac Leirner, and Ernesto Neto.

"The most important thing about this exhibition is the amount of artists who are exhibiting for the first time in the United Kingdom.

"These are artists who have played a pivotal role in Brazilian art history", said British art historian Michael Asbury, who was associate curator of the Rio de Janeiro section of the Century City exhibition recently shown at Tate Modern in London.

With Soy loco por tí (1969), Antonio Manuel defied the military regime

In his view, the works displayed in Oxford show that Brazilian art is both in continuous conversation with its own context and with art abroad.

"There is a constant exchange of ideas and historical references. In the last ten years this exchange has multiplied.

"European and American art is also being shown more often in Brazil, not only in big spaces such as the São Paulo Biennal, but also in small galleries", he said.

Different paradigms

The youngest of the Brazilian artists in Oxford, 33 year-old José Damasceno, sees this exhibition as a big opportunity to initiate a dialogue with the British public and to establish links with contemporary art in Britain.

Damasceno, considered one of the most important artists of the 1990s in Brazil, believes the strength of his art and that of many of his contemporaries lies in the fact that they do not limit themselves to a domestic or social discourse, and deal with more universal paradigms.

Hélio Oiticica´s "Parangolés" (1964) show his preoccupation with the body

"I look at my work in relation to the history of art. I happen to be Brazilian and of course that probably is somehow reflected in my work, but I could be from anywhere", he says.

His 1997 installation The Next Omen (Experiment on the visibility of a dynamic substance) shows a man´s suit floating in space, inter-crossed with tensed threads.

It seems to challenge the viewers, in a ludic fashion, to reconsider both the way they perceive objects in relation to space and the way they perceive themselves.

Floating in space

The boundaries of space, time and movement are explored in several other pieces, including that of Iole de Freitas, who started working with experimental film and photographic sequences in the 1970s and now concentrates on producing large scale site-specific sculptures.

Iole de Freitas engages in a constant dialogue with architecture

"It is interesting that although the work I am showing here was specifically created for this exhibition, it relates very well to that of other artists, such as Nuno Ramos, Damasceno and Lygia Pape.

"It is very important to have this kind of tension between works", she says.

"It shows that the organizers of the exhibition not only thought of establishing a relationship between several moments of the Brazilian art production, but also that they thought of putting together works by artists from different generations, works that sometimes are in tension between themselves and sometimes complement each other".

She thinks that it is also interesting to see the interaction of the different pieces by Brazilian women included in the exhibition.

"Apple Curtain" (1996) by Lygia Clark and "The Negress" (1998) by Carmela Gross

"There are works here, like Lygia Clark´s Trepantes - Climbing grubs - which gave us a fundamental aesthetic impulse.

"The same can be said about the philosophical subtleness of Mira Schendel´s work and the intellectual vitality of Lygia Pape".

"Carmela Gross´s A Negra - The Negress - also makes a very strong commentary and her new video-installation is excellent because it talks about the questions of lightness, fluidity, movement, and dislocation.

"It seems to me that there is a cross-fertilization of interests between the different artists", Iole de Freitas adds.

Experiment Experiência: Art in Brazil 1958-2000 runs until 21 October.