Events

A new edition of the São Paulo Biennial

webmaster 07-11-2012

The imminence of poetics was the theme chosen for the 30th edition of São Paulo’s Biennial, to be open to the public through the first days of December. The curatorial team, headed by Luis Perez-Oramas, and made up of Andre Severo and Tobi Maier as associated curators and Isabela Villanueva as assistant curator, was focused on the “multiplicity (…) and permanent mutability of artistic poetics: their aesthetic and politic topology, their survival, alterations, (…) back downs, advances, assimilations, condensations and deformations”.

In a special report for Arte por Excelencias magazine, included on its upcoming edition, Conchita Pedrosa and Roberto Segre commented on: “The concept of show offered by the most important art biennials has generally paid particular attention to grandiloquent discourses and the authors of great narratives. Perez-Oramas accepted the tough challenge of joining the renewing dynamic that has characterized recent biennials in Sao Paulo: the 28th, directed by Ivo Mesquita, was labeled the “biennial of the emptiness” because they left one empty floor in the building, condemning the present art crisis; the 29th, organized by Moacir dos Anjos and Agnaldo Farias –Hay siempre un vaso de mar para el hombre navegar–, showcased radical political attitudes. After these denunciations and proclamations, Perez-Oramas decided to document the existence of diverging personal ways, different from nationalist positions, politic statements, or unitary artistic movements, in an effort to dismantle traditional objective discourses”.

Among the 112 artists invited, most of which are far from traditional commercial circuits and are identified with innovating initiatives, we can mention Alair Gomes (Brazil), Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay), Ali Kazma (Turkey), Bernardo Ortiz (Colombia), Eduardo Gil (Venezuela), Fernando Ortega (Mexico), Leandro Tartaglia (Argentina), Mark Morrisroe (United States), Sandra Vasquez de la Horra (Chile) and Yuki Kimura (Japan), with a majority of national creators.