View of part of the exhibition that is on display at SESC 24 de Maio.
View of part of the exhibition that is on display at SESC 24 de Maio.

*By Aracy Amaral

 

A curatorship is not an easy task to be conceived. Especially if the number of participants is large, the space is difficult, and the reluctance to leave out everything that could be selected is great. Especially when focusing on an exhibition such as Northeast, currently at SESC May 24. A vast region in creativity, the desire, one can see, was to include everything! Even if visitors find it difficult to understand what is exposed. The idea that passes is that nothing should be able to escape the curators, even if it is not digestible by the visitor. Who feels involved in a whirlpool that pushes his eyes and ears down all the expressions of Northeastern creators, not distinguishing any in particular. Thus, popular expressions, cordel, figurative painting, concrete painting, conceptual art, video, at all levels and dimensions, violently involve the visitor. Who feels physically and visually engulfed by the difficulty of the cluttered space in trying – in vain – to privilege one or another creator with a look that gets lost in the labyrinthine montage that is proposed to us.

The system accumulative is preferred by some curators – but not by all. And we have doubts about the correctness of this point of view. The good visibility of an included work should be a concern. Thus, to suddenly discover, in the midst of an exhibition like this one by Sesc 24 de Maio, the Withdrawals by Portinari, from the MASP collection, is a surprise. Just like seeing a little Sérvulo Esmeraldo while confessing the difficulty in locating Brennand, João Câmara, or Miguel dos Santos.

And suddenly we find Montez Magno, among a multitude of unexpected diverse creators, without any logic of presentation in space. The opposite of the expected didacticism of an exhibition that attracts a crowd of heterogeneous visitors who would deserve a clear orientation to leave with a notion of artistic expression in a region so extensive and wide in its creativity. Perhaps this show is configured beforehand as an exhibition should not be made (and could it not have been divided into stages according to the diversity of languages?). In fact, curation is not an easy task to conceive.


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