Our new group exhibition Behind The Sun features new work from five winners of Brazil’s largest contemporary art prize. To find out more, we asked Rafael Raddi, Director President of Brazil’s Instituto Plano Cultural to discuss the art and its impact…
It is with great pleasure that we present this exhibition of the works of the winning artists of the 5th Marcantonio Vilaca Prize. This event not only showcases the works of the five winning artists and artistic collectives (Berna Reale, Gê Orthof, Empreza Group, Virginia Medeiros and Nicolás Robbio) but also those works assembled by Rafael Fonseca the Brazilian holder of a curatorial residency in Manchester as well the artist residency winner, Virginia Medeiros.
This exciting offering allows visitors to experience a broad panorama of contemporary Brazilian artistic endeavours and experiments from all four corners of the country. The aim of the Marcantonio Vilaca Prize has always been to promote art in all its forms, encourage the acquisition of contemporary art for public collections and also to promote Brazilian art abroad. This exhibition forms part of the latter aim to ensure that Brazilian art is seen and debated in major European centres. Appropriately, this year’s theme has been the relationship and interaction between art and industry, coinciding with Brazilian National Confederation of Industry taking a keen interest and seeking to encourage this. The artists’ response has been to affirm that art can go hand-in-hand with ordinary life.
Historically in Brazil since the Concrete Art movements, many artists definitely pointed to a constructive consciousness in the country, which took shape with Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape, among others. That movement explored the basis of the perception of structures, creating unusual situations, and at the same time turning itself into a new style. Sculpture, architecture and especially design came into play on an industrial scale, entering as a new factor in the economic landscape, so much so that each of these wonderful inventions touch avant-garde utopia in breaking the boundaries between art and conventional demands.
Since that time, contemporary art has adopted new methodologies and stepped down off its pedestal to seek communication with a broader audience in more ordinary situations. And why not? Today, it’s fair to say that a frequently discussed concept is the development of the Creative Economy. Touching each service or product developed from the creativity that can be used to generate new jobs and incomes, this idea spans many new sectors: the entertainment industry, gaming, the Internet – but also from the pedagogical artistic proposals that have been used to make our productivity an increasingly ecological and sustainable design.
The language, poetry and action of these artists whose work we display in Behind The Sun is determinedly dynamic, breaking free from old models, warning of possible ecological directions, pointing towards formulas for the future and confident in the strength of aesthetics. They promise to draw shortcuts within the vast networks of roads that now link a new industrialization in Brazil and especially to coat concrete echoes between every one of its necessary variables: art, ethics and productivity.
Behind The Sun is can be viewed in our gallery space until Sunday 25 September. To find out more, head here.
