The Portuguese artist Dalila Gonçalves inaugurated in exposure Broken leg with smooth cast, at Marli Matsumoto Contemporary Art Appendix, on Travessa Dona Paula, in São Paulo. Curated by Sergio Fazenda RodriguesThe exhibition consists of a site-specific piece that occupies all the walls of the space with plaster impressions produced from coins from different parts of the world.
Instead of being displayed as objects, the coins appear as discreet marks, buried beneath a fragile, temporary white layer. The images engraved on their surfaces—animals inhabiting different geographies—are partially veiled by the plaster and reveal themselves through textures, depths, and shadows.
The figures follow a vertical organization based on the habitats of each animal: marine creatures are placed near the ground; those that inhabit the land are at the visitor's body height; and those that fly occupy the upper part of the walls. The room thus becomes a kind of symbolic landscape, in which sea, land, and sky are constructed from the juxtaposition of different species and territories.
By transferring the coins to a brittle material, Dalila Gonçalves also shifts the meanings traditionally associated with these objects. Previously subjected to daily circulation and the logic of financial value, they take on an almost ghostly presence. Monetary exchange gives way to discovery, composition, and sensory experience.
In the continuous field of marks, the wall ceases to function merely as a support and becomes a territory in formation. “In the totality of this new layer of plaster, in the discovery of the figures that find refuge there, the work explores a new territory. A territory of superimpositions, composed of beings from different geographies, which does not appear as something fixed, but rather as something under construction. Something that, delicately, attempts an exercise of contiguity, openness, and discovery,” writes Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues in the text accompanying the exhibition. exposure.
"Broken Paw with Smooth Plaster" is supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, DGArtes, and the Portuguese Republic – Culture. exposure It will be showing until October 8th.
