Evento (Luisa Duarte)
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 Undoing that outdated order is the premise of this show.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”