Rafael RG

/in ,

Guarulhos, 1986. Lives in Belo Horizonte

In seminar format, Ano passado eu morri, mas esse ano eu não morro [Last year I died, but this year I won’t] was devised during Rafael RG’s residence in Sorocaba. The starting point was a pile of correspondence the artist came across at the São Paulo Municipal Archive between the artist Victor Brecheret (1894-1955) and the São Paulo Municipal Department of Culture concerning an outstanding payment owed to the artist. After finding this material, RG wrote a play in conjunction with an actor from Sorocaba, chosen by open audition. The piece deals with such issues as artistic remuneration, the relationship between creation and craft, and passion, both for others or for one’s own work.

The economics of emotion at play in the artwork and the limits between the prosaic and the formal are constant themes for RG. His exhibitions tend to mix documental sources (personal or from archives) and dynamics in order to create some sort of connection, perhaps an open call, a date, or a workshop. This allows him to meld issues of desire with his own work, and to take an ironic stab at the often cold and impersonal ways of the art system. During his Frestas residence, RG also proposed a workshop entitled Esqueça o futuro – arte contemporânea como solução para problemas amorosos e outros tipos de problemas [Forget the future – contemporary art as a solution to love and other worries], in which he encouraged participants to consider interventions for the city of Sorocaba based on this self-help pitch. In O momento presente [The present moment], he staged short, unannounced plays at Sesc’s recreational spaces.

[UC]

Ricardo Càstro

/in , , ,

São Roque, 1972. Lives between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

Abravanar is a verb invented to designate modes of unleashing vital energy through interaction with elements of cultural memory, sometimes abstract and sometimes clearly harnessed to popular festivities, religious cults and the mass media. The abravaner may expand the self through the sensory experience of colors and light, musical chants, and the receptive, perspiring, connected body. Ricardo Càstro has been abravaning since the early 2000s, and this has yielded artistic and spiritual manifestations, both his own (and often privately so) and of others, be they partners or publics, to whom he offers beauty in return for empathy and exchange.

Wava consists of three portals: Platinum song, Stair lip and Coffee table. In silver, gold and crystal, respectively, the three works propose meditation rituals. Once activated in their totality (as the artist intends), they heighten our perception of an invisible, high-frequency wave that spreads and intensifies. The stirred wave spills into Sorocaba, where Ricardo spent a month as a resident, and out over the internet, where he has amplified this presence and possible interactions on Google Maps and Instagram, scattering clues and creating routes of access in the form of invitations. From geometries to gypsy drift, through tarot cards in a town square, a performance at the foot of a public monument, and a lot of face-pulling, all frugal and exuberant, onwards it goes, but lest we forget: exuberance is just an abravanist pretext.

Obras

Wava, 2017
técnica mista
PARTICIPAÇÃO André Bragança, Gabriel Junqueira e Marcelo Fagge

WAVA is an invisible wave that can emanate from the three elements (portals) arranged here in a triangle.

In this space, any individual can trigger the wave. The sequence of interaction with the elements and the rhythm of the experience should be decided by each participant. We recommend that participants enter barefoot.

Suggested interactions:

Canto platina (Platinum song)_RECEIVE
Lie down and stay in that position until you can tune into the platinum wavelength. Here the key is one of rest, meditation, attention to one’s breathing, the internalization of energy—attuning.

Naco de escada (Stair lip)_SHOUT
Ratchet up the volume, concentrate on something you want to break with and holler as loud as you can. Here the key is one of radicalization as a way of jolting energy into flux; of the possibility of bringing buried inner questions into the outer realm—liberation.

Mesa de centro (Coffee table)_DIALOGUE
Talk to a crystal ball in your mind’s eye, without touching it. See your future, visualize. Here the key is one of understanding, reformulation and the possibility of redirecting your ideas—redesign.

Cleverson Salvaro

/in , ,

Analysis of the exhibition context tends to be Cleverson Salvaro’s first step in creating his works, which say a lot about the local geographical, economic, social and cultural conjuncture. For Frestas, Salvaro presents a new sculpture that is half wall, half portal, built on a vacant plot midway between the towns of Sorocaba and Votorantim. Most evidently, the piece raises issues of territory and borders, but there is a more specific meaning to its location. For years, these towns were locked in a legal dispute over which had the right to collect taxes from the Esplanada Mall, which sits on the border between the two.

The sculpture also references another imbroglio involving Sorocaba: this one concerning a 20 m-tall structure known locally as The Vergueira Spider. Originally erected in the 1960s as part of an unbuilt church, this abandoned concrete formwork resembles an arachnid. Salvaro planned his sculpture in layers, so that it could be left unfinished as soon as the funding had run out. The work itself was designed to be aborted, so its incompleteness is an intentional part of its conception, inspired by this concrete monument to a bankrupt development.

[L.B.]

Fabiano Marques

/in , ,

Santos, 1970. Lives in Berlin

Between 1976 and 1978, during the final years of Institutional Act no 5 (AI-5), known as the most draconian instrument of repression during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Fabiano Marques was living in Sorocaba. At the time, his father was a judge and his mother, a geometry teacher. His memory of the town and his desire to reflect on the role the Judiciary is playing in the current political situation, seen in the light of a critical reading of past events, converged in the chance to work with a group of local law students interested in studying the court rulings issued during those years of his childhood.

In Os processos [The Cases] (2017), Marques worked with students and teachers from Paulista University (UNIP) in Sorocaba to select and summarize rulings for the town’s municipal court records. The aim was to annex the material to the official archives so it could be made available for public consultation. In the late 70s, court records contained only the information needed to locate cases in the archives. Since then, despite changes in the regulations, these documents have not been updated.

Libra (2017) consists of a metal sculpture which, seen against a backdrop of sky, points straight to the constellation that bears its name. In it, the stars become points connected by lines scaled to represent their individual distances from the Earth. Seen from a certain perspective, the sculpture takes on a long, conical form reminiscent of a telescope, underscoring the fact that vision is always partial and conditioned by a particular viewpoint.

[Y.R.]

Obras

Libra, 2017
ferro
CONSULTORIA DE ASTRONOMIA Martha Terenzzo e Axel Jaccobs
AUTOCAD Gabriela Lessa

Os processos, 2017
WORKSHOP COORDENAÇÃO JURÍDICA Elisa Rosa
PARTICIPANTES alunos do curso de Direito da Faculdade Unip de Sorocaba