In Manobras [Manoeuvres], the artist Celina Portella brings together a new production that breaks the boundaries that, in theory, separate the territories of image, medium and performance. With a critical text by Paula Alzugaray, the exhibition opens on November 7 - Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm - and continues until December 18, 2020.
Celina overspills the action represented in the image into reality. Through iron and fire[RM1] , the artist materializes the action upon the media of the works shown in the exhibition: photography, video and canvas. Thus, the image of the knife in hand suggests the action of incision; the process is reinforced by the real, actual cut, which is seen on the paper, creating a link between the image and its medium. The same occurs in the works on burnt photographs and in the video Fogo-fátuo [Fatuous-Fire]: the lit candle in the image materializes its effect on the paper, which the photograph is printed on.
Celina Portella proposes, above all, the non-dissociation between performance and medium. “The works connect corporealities, the body itself and the body of the work, questioning the image as medium and, therefore, perception and the idea of reality. From the interaction between body expression and the medium, photography and video become structural parts of the work itself, inseparable. The intersection between the corporeity of the works and the meanings contained in them interests me because it presupposes actions present in other times-spaces and suggests parallel realities”, the artist comments.
As in the Spatialism of Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Celina's investigation not only suggests overcoming the material as a two-dimensional medium, but also seeks intersections between representation and its materiality and to aggregate the dimensions of the passing of time and transformations of space. Or, as the critic Paula Alzugaray interprets, “Celina questions the cycles of icon-crises, idolatry and hatred, currently experienced in Brazil: museum collections burnt due to neglect and forgetfulness; the destruction of religious icons by intolerant theoclasts; hard-won public policies, undone by those in power guided by extremist ideological thinking”.
The exhibition will open in accordance with current health and safety protocols, which include measures such as: mandatory use of masks by visitors and Zipper employees; hand sanitizer available for visitors and employees; visits limited to 20% of space capacity; maintaining a minimum distance of 1.5 meters between customers and employees; constant cleaning of the facilities.
[RM1]O significado duplo da expressão se perde no inglês, mas se o significado for traduzido a referência ao ferro da faca e o fogo se perdem, portanto optei pela tradução literal.
