Event
Site-Specif at the Palácio da Aclamação, residence of the governors of the State of Bahia in the last century and former Palacete dos Moraes in the 19th century. Located in the upper city of Salvador, it receives the winds that come from the sea, and the wind is the inspiration for the project.
The wind, commanded by Iansã, mistress of storms and gales, sweeps through the halls of the palace, displacing the heavy European rosewood furniture in the Banqueting Hall, forming a hurricane in the entrance hall and making the heavy curtains in the Ballroom fly.
The installation took place at the end of 2010, at the invitation of curator Daniel Rangel, and occupies 3,000 meters of the palace. The palace’s furniture was used in the hall and banqueting hall, and 10 industrial fans were placed in a circle below the sumptuous crystal chandelier, forming a circular zone neutral to the wind, keeping the chandelier static, but its sound, recorded in advance, is reproduced in speakers in the four corners of the banqueting hall.
No salão de festas do Palácio da Aclamação, em Salvador, foram ligados, ao mesmo tempo, 10 ventiladores industriais montados sobre bases vazadas de metal a meia altura, dispostos de maneira circular e direcionados para fora do centro da circunferência, estabelecendo, desse modo, uma zona neutra em seu interior enquanto balançavam vigorosamente as cortinas no entorno. Acima desta zona neutra, centralizado, pairava um grande lustre de cristais imóvel, em desacordo com o som ambiente de cristais chacoalhando.
From the sidewalk one can see that something is misplaced in the Palace of Acclamation, where the artist Marcos Chaves’ solo show “Evento” (Event), curated by Daniel Rangel, is being held. The great entrance hall has become a sort of scene straddling the absurd. Several mobile pieces – tables, chairs, beds, cupboards, etc. – are suspended from the ceiling, creating an amazing and unexpected view. The eclectic architecture of the Palace, dating from 1921, conflicts in every aspect with the surrounding city of Salvador de Bahia. Undoing that outdated order is the premise of this show.
Using just the movables that were already in the Palace, Chaves establishes a fine relationship with the team for the conservation of the Palace to literally turning upside down the centennial furniture. Via the main entrance and another at the back leading to a garden, the typical breeze of the town flows through the hall, making the mobile installation to move slightly over our heads.
However, the hall is only a part of the narrative in “Event”. Walking towards the banquet room, usually filled with organized heavy furniture, Chaves has upset the entire order. By making the large cold room a chaotic maelstrom in which chairs and tables stacked and overlapped over each other, the artist suggests that something has happened there. Note that the visitor cannot go into the space. A glass plate at the entrance of the room limits our field of vision. This is an intentional procedure that enhances the quality of their installation scene, a sort of photography, a memory of something that has happened. The lighting works as a play of light and shadow improving the dramatic and theatrical ambience that transforms the environment. What we see are traces of a possible windstorm.
The third and last room is the engine of everything else the visitor has seen before. Where heavy curtains cover closed windows, the artist has installed a series of fans, all very powerful, forming a circle. In the middle of it hangs a large crystal chandelier. While echoing the wind, there is a noise of ticking crystals that does not come from the luster of the chandelier, which does not move. What is heard instead is a recorded sound reproducing what actually occurs when windows are open and buses pass in the avenue in front of the Palace. The low lighting, the curtains swinging, the subtle sound of beating crystals: all this creates a ghostly and cinematic atmosphere. All stimuli here overcome the visual qualities of the place, broken apart by Chaves in favor of a more diverse experience. The circular narrative composed by the artist starts with the windy saloon and evolves through both the banquet room and the hall with the mobile.
The title “Event” contributes to the sense of the show, meaning both a happening as well as a pun on the word wind – the central element of the installation. If Chaves is known for doing this kind of semantic association that generates a new path for interpreting the artwork, we should note that this is not only a pun, but also a name that summarizes the experience itself, the episode and the outcome. The wind carried it all away and precipitated an unexpected event.
Please note that the greatest visual potentiality of the show does not count with any tricks. We see clearly the steel cables from where the furniture is hanged, and the wind blows without having its origins hidden. Chaves can surprise with no special effects. And when I say visual potentiality, I emphasize the expression because this is one of the most eloquent exhibitions already held by the artist. We get in and out of the space traversed by an experience in the fullest sense of the word.
“Event” reminded me of a extract by Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, who says that words, at first, are in a “state of dictionary.” What the poet does is to take them from this raw state and combines them in such a way that they become poetry. Somehow Marcos Chaves did this at the Palace of Acclamation. There was an ordered, hierarchical dictionary waiting for him. The artist messed it, transfigured it, rebuilding the parts in favor of a new poetic order/disorder that gives us the possibility of seeing it in a completely different way. Taking things from the world in the “state of the dictionary” is the power of art. Without it, everything would be opaque and suspended; with it, everything gains movement, surprising us. This is what Marcos Chaves’ “Event” has to offer.
Luisa Duarte
December 2010
“Event”
EVENT AT THE PALACE
Having seen a large human skeleton, a tree, wooden poles, clouds, ghosts and nymphs… at the opening of the second edition of the Programa Ocupas, the Palácio da Aclamação is now occupied by the force of a natural phenomenon: the wind.
Evento is the first solo exhibition in Bahia by Rio de Janeiro artist Marcos Chaves. A leader in contemporary Brazilian art and one of the most important and active artists of his generation, Chaves was inspired by the proposal of the Programa Ocupas. This program aims to create new dialogues with the history, the collection, the architecture, and the surroundings of this building – a place with fantastic visuals, open to a thousand possibilities.
In Evento, Chaves creates an unusual, risky project, maybe the largest and most challenging exhibition of his career. He turns the wind into the protagonist, setting up a site-specific work that creates different effects through the spaces of the Palácio da Aclamação.
In addition to working with objects and installations, Chaves is also a sensitive photographer, who has photographed the space and its objects while being enchanted by the Palace and its collection. To execute the works exhibited here, he maintains the same creative process that made his other site-specific works recognized here and abroad: working with elements he found on-site. In this case, the elements are the furniture that is part of the existing collection of the Palácio. With them, he constructed a large mobile made up of beds, tables and chairs in the lobby, and a scene of devastation in the banquet hall. In the ballroom, the only empty space, the wind appears as if it were trapped, physically audible to visitors by the sound of a crystal chandelier that remains immobile, despite the wind.
In this show, Chaves makes a visual composition that is simulatiously, playful and fantastic, but that, does not try to hide his elaborate process. In Evento, the aesthetic effect is enhanced by the exposure of the artifices and structures that exist behind the installations, making the artist’s presence and intervention evident. There are no tricks. There are the fans, the iron grating, the steel cables – – all exposed, increasing the visual impact of the works.
With this exhibition, we launch the 2011 calendar of the Programa Ocupas with an initiative that achieves special success by opening this historic building to the public while transforming the Palácio da Aclamação into one of the most important exhibition sites in the city. This is a space with a different proposal, dedicated to innovative experiences, which is now starting to consolidate, obtaining excellent exposure in the media, both local and national – – including winning a prize (from the magazine Bravo, for the exhibition Faustus, by José Rufino).
With Marcos Chaves’ Evento, we begin the second edition of this Program. We ask permission and a blessing from lansã, queen of the winds, lightning and storms, for the opening of this exhibition.
Epa Hey I Oyá!
Daniel Rangel