MADRID.- "An Act of Seeing that Unfolds", on view at the
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía since yesterday, puts forward an approach to the Susana and Ricardo Steinbruch Collection, a major repertory of different temporalities and geographies centered, first and foremost, on Latin American contemporaneity — particularly Brazilian — and the artistic practices that transpired in Eastern Europe across the second half of the twentieth century.
The pieces selected for the show, that will end on March 13, 2023, pivot around the theory of gestures coined by Czech-Brazilian thinker Vilém Flusser. For Flusser, these rituals of perception — which can seem minimal and not respond to a specific causation — not only make our own aesthetic and affective recognition possible, but also underpin a cartography of relations and crossovers that join seemingly disparate artists.
Therefore, a dialogical and non-linear survey is laid out, starting from a site-specific project by Fernanda Gomes and moving through anti-art movements in the former Yugoslavia, Neo-concretism and artistic responses that sparked political events in the 1960s and 1970s in the contexts mentioned. Equally, another setting is devoted to Mira Schendel and other unions are explored, for instance those which span the idea of territory or are installed inside experimentation with and from language.
An Act of Collecting
Collecting is a gesture with close ties to memory. According to the thinker Vilém Flusser, it is precisely in the gestures — which can seem minimal and not respond to a specific causation — where different aesthetic and affective arrangements that make our own recognition possible mobilize.
With regard to the Steinbruch Collection, these rituals of perception lie behind the cartography of relations and crossovers that join seemingly disparate works. Yet they are also found in the conceptual framework that underpins the practice of many of its artists. Anna Maria Maiolino spoke of the gesture as an inner manifestation that “joins the inside to the outside”, while Mira Schendel approached it from an art of allusions and echoes, of poetic meanings which take precedence over immediate meanings.
Like Schendel and Maiolino, Flusser situated a large part of his reflections inside a Brazilian context, underscoring, opposite the hermeticism of discourse, the methodological importance of dialogue. Thus, through a relational survey which is also sensitive to discontinuities and ellipses, the pieces in this exhibition work as semiotic flickers laden with gestures, mutations and memories.
Walter Benjamin once said that a collection is characterized by its ability to generate narratives and establish links between present and past experiences. "An Act of Seeing that Unfolds" arranges a series of exchanges and unions which, far from taking a purely linear view, seek to build an open reserve of experiences and images, thereby illuminating the invention of new histories.
The exhibition includes works by Jonathas de Andrade, Leonor Antunes, Artur Barrio, Geraldo de Barros, Hércules Barsotti, Maria Bartuszová, Marcel Broodthaers, Waltercio Caldas, Sérgio Camargo, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Antonio Dias, Juan Downey, Anna Bella Geiger, Fernanda Gomes, Tomislav Gotovac, Ion Grigorescu, Víctor Grippo, Hudinilson Jr., Sanja Iveković, Julije Knifer, Edward Krasinski, Jac Leirner, José Leonilson, Lea Lublin, Anna Maria Maiolino, Mangelos (Dimitrije Bašičević), Antonio Manuel, Dóra Maurer, Cildo Meireles, Vânia Mignone, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Luiz Sacilotto, Mira Schendel, Regina Silveira, Mladen Stilinović and Tunga (Antônio José de Barros de Carvalho).
