Daniel Lie

São Paulo, 1988

Lie presents a previously unseen installation, Passa logo [Hurry Across], in the courtyard between the two blocks of the Sesc Sorocaba building. Live flowers and plants adorning the skyway will be left to wither and rot over the course of the exhibition, with the words “Passa logo” written vertically in large letters and clearly visible from the street.

The work underscores the functional nature of the skyway and invites visitors to consider for a moment their fleeting, superficial contact with this sort of space. At the same time it celebrates the passage, the work also issues a humorous order to the visitor: obey the time flow the architecture dictates and don’t dally on the skyway.

The work derives from Lie’s research on time and impermanence. The artist likes to work with organic material (plants, fruit, earth) in order to build structures that undergo the various stages of decomposition, engaging in a slow, public ceremony that has one inevitable end. The work produced for Frestas looks at the harried pace of contemporary life in contrast with the slower time of nature. In the meantime, Lie’s gesture lauds rights of passage, from one building to another, from one stage to the next, from life to death.

[L.B.]