Appropriation and Memory (Fernando Cocchiarale)
Issuing from the appropriation of images and daily-use objects, the work of Marcos Chaves, inscribes itself in one esthetic project, an alternative to the production of forms and to manual facture, characteristic of conventional art languages (painting, sculpture, drawing and printing).
Esthetic forcefulness that lies in the appropriation and combination of everyday utensils was legitimized by the renovating practices of some artists, as early as in the first decades of the 20th century. Cubist collages and assemblages, surrealism, Dadaism and, particularly, the readymades proposed by Marcel Duchamp and the objets trouvés by André Breton, which incorporated the appropriation of objects to repertoire of artistic creation. Such a procedure, unacceptable till then, was tolerated by segments of the art milieu and by some critics, though out of grasp for the majority.
Perhaps, on the account of this communication gap, some fifty years had to pass for appropriation of non-artistic objects and materials to become a frequent feature in contemporary artworks, as in pop art, minimalism, arte povera and conceptual art. To many artists, the sense of creation has migrated from manual production to ideas and attitudes.
In Marcos Chaves, collecting and combining objects is an essential trait: following preset ideas, through streets and thrift shops, collecting urban consumerism waste is a determinant factor in Chaves’ poetics, whether it comes marked by tear and wear, or due to the precarious configuration of recycling behaviors that are typical of the poorer social strata.
Marcos Chaves, however, is not restricted to the appropriation of utensils and to the images that are preexistent to the works. The combination of objects among themselves and with photographic images has never aspired to the constitute some formal and perennial composition as in sculpture, which has a fixed structure. Rather (mentally) conceived than (materially) produced, though in certain cases it may have been triggered by some of the objects collected, the connection interlinking components in Marcos’ works is achieved by the way objects are deployed in the exhibiting space. And also – perhaps above all – by means of the ironical nexus brought about by words written on the works or as registered in their titles. Chaves creates a syntax of his own, with no preconceived rules, which lends esthetic sense to the corpus of his production.
The photographic images now currently on display are offspring of his work, as exhibited in the show Eclético, when he and Ana Vitória Mussi, both separately and simultaneously, presented their own site-specific works at Castelinho do Flamengo. All elements essential to his poetics, with the exception of the word, here curiously playing a supporting role, are there. The eclectic architecture, the stuccoed sculptures on the walls, the makeup and other ornaments used on the statues at the location are similar, both in character and in method – never in their configuration – to all the other elements ever used by him.
Petrified in the fragile materiality of photographic paper, such images are a record of the artist’s ephemeral intervention. The motionless eternity of the statues at Castelinho do Flamengo, disturbed by the guerrilla action of Marcos Chaves, was held in temporary suspension from Oct18 to Nov19, 2000. For the brief period of a month they were inscribed into life’s flow: wearing makeup and ornaments, catching the eye of the beholder for novelty of it. Today they survive only as the light, shadow and color specters contained in the memory of the photos.
January 2001.