SAO PAULO.- In Trilha, Iran do Espírito Santo’s new exhibition at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo, the artist presents a new series in which he represents vinyl records in watercolor. Each work was conceived by the artist according to specific songs and albums, which led to a sort of autobiographical soundtrack, highlighting compositions from the Brazilian repertoire, from MPB to classical music and rock.
No two records have the same “fingerprint,” since each has its own specific grooves and width between tracks. Like the experience of listening to a record, Iran’s watercolors, though executed with surgical precision on a true-to-life scale, still carry crackles and some ambient noise, as the manual nature of the works inevitably leads to the appearance of little accidents. This is a loss in image fidelity, accentuating the physical process behind each piece’s creation. The main structure of meaning in these 12 watercolors, as in Iran’s oeuvre as a whole, lies beyond the immediately visible and takes root in the intellectual processes articulated by him as an artist and by ourselves as viewers.
In the autobiographical dimension of this new body of work, the traces that music makes in memory are figured in the reflective sheen on the depictions of vinyl records, which Iran constructs by allowing the white of the paper to appear behind thinner coats of paint. These shining paths rotate successively, sectioning the circle discs like the hands on a clock. 12 paintings of 12 records and 12 tracks from each, like 12 hours out of the day or 12 months in a year. These watercolors, like an ear that is always listening, are constantly layering the singularity of perception over the plurality of experience.
Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is also presenting Corte, a solo exhibition by Paraguayan artist Claudia Casarino in São Paulo. Curated by Keyna Eleison, the show marks the artist’s return to the city after almost ten years and presents a panorama of her work, with new works and key sculptures in her repertoire. Casarino, who took part in the 54th Venice Biennale in the Latin American Pavilion of the Istituto Italo-Latinoamericano (IILA) in 2011, creates installations and objects with clothing and fabrics to articulate the mechanisms of disappearance and revelation of the female body in physical and social space. The voids in her work resonate with the stories and images of women affected by systems of structural violence and lend themselves to denaturalizing these oppressive devices.
In her recent investigations, Casarino has begun focusing on minimal gestures that often go unnoticed, such as the absence of pockets in women’s clothes—something premeditated and promoted by the patriarchal system that has always prevented the autonomy of feminized bodies. Through such paths, the artist approaches a poetics of the memory of fabric and clothing. In the curator’s words, “By bringing naturalized violence to light and making it visible through beauty, the artist challenges our perceptions and forces us to face the uncomfortable truths that clothe us.”
Her latest solo exhibitions include La faena de habitar un contorno, Centro Cultural de la Ciudad Manzana de la Ribera, Asunción, Paraguay (2024); Desde el Umbral—Con esta boca, en este mundo, Fundación Migliorisi, Asunción, Paraguay (2023); Tan pequeño que [allí] cabía el mundo, María Casado, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023); and Lo que nos mantiene vivos es la distancia, MuVIM—Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y la Modernidad, Valencia, Spain (2020).
In Brazil, the artist has taken part in four editions of the Bienal do Mercosul (2011, 2005, 2003, and 2001) in Curitiba, as well as in the group exhibition Os Mágicos Olhos das Américas at Museu Afro Brasil (2009) in São Paulo.
Her works can be found in important public collections, such as The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; The Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas City, USA; Casa de América y Museo Wifredo Lam de La Habana, Havana, Cuba; Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands; and Museo del Barro, Asunción, Paraguay, among others.
