Exhibition "What is..." by Ricardo Basbaum

Marli Matsumoto Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition "What is it…?" by the artist Ricardo Basbaum, with critical text by Luiza Interlenghi. 

"What is it…?” presents a selection of works created between 1984 and 2024, some made public for the first time, others very little seen. The path presented involves the use of various supports and resources, indicating the artist's recurring interest in constructing interventions in close proximity to the communicative field, adopting repetition resources, recursive structures and the mobilization of discourse in devices of visuality, sound and orality. 

“The brand Olho [1984] recovers my performance in the 1980s, evoking proximity to the cultural industry and the control society, seeking to react to the crisis of value in the face of the automatisms of habit and consumption, paving the way for, from 1990 onwards, , the development of the NBP project – New Bases for Personality: since then, I have been deepening the conceptual layers of the work, moving through a recurring and repetitive sign, at the same time visual and verbal and, therefore, sound. The strong orality, present in videos and diagrams, is also an instrument for collective works that mobilize the voice as an index of encounters and clashes – of bodies with the physicality of the work and also between themselves. The visitor is invited to join a performative dynamic, which does not allow for indifference, as he finds himself involved in games of capture from which he builds his relationship with the works on display: “sitting, jumping, crossing”, but also walking, listening, read and see, on the move. “What is it…?” presents some effort to get closer to the visitor, making the works construct different degrees of proximity and distance, whether of objects, sounds and images, or of the very idea of ​​exhibition as a territory of dynamic mobilization of the senses: what is proposed is that the question is constructed close to the skin, in the vertigo of encountering things – “what is it…?”, launched as a general and open question, is just an indication for the incessant production of astonishment in each moment of action of the living body, in a non-conforming way. What is it…?". 

Ricardo Basbaum

Service
Exhibition | What is it…
From August 13th to October 11th
Monday to Friday, 11am to 19pm | Saturday, from 12am to 17pm