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Paulo Bruscky | | |
"Art has ceased to be a conclusion; on the contrary, it is a presumption."
Toni Negri
Take I
Every multi-form and plural work by Paulo Bruscky, as well as promoting a written record composed of its own signs, which are registered neither by Mass Custom nor by cultural objectification, represents one of the greatest expansions of extended writing in Brazilian and international art. This is partly due to the artist's condition as a poietes - an original picture-maker - and partly due to his continuous contact with textual elements (which may be letters, words or sentences, achieving an iconic result), but above all it is due to his demonstrating that the poetic function of this corpus is to intermediate currents which are external to textuality: the creation of aesthetic lines of escape that fail to eliminate ethical realities to come, critical formulations that are able to articulate the principle of reality and its playful, game-like manipulation.
Constantly in evidence in his work is the opening up of argumental and representational limits, in which the registrations/supports/means are the fields that give rise to a posture (a poetic) that denounces this primigenial filiation with the transversal concept of poiesis - of language creation, of a cosmovision of the world, always within the bounds of "sharing of the sensitive" that art constitutes, reconfiguring even as an - experimental - political position before the world. We are, therefore, talking of a contaminated poetry that does not conceal the root of its contents or intentions, that transpires a bond with the various instances of life, without wanting to be tied to them or to expound sociology; being a "different sensorium to that of domination" (as Jacques Rancière says), with forms/actions that question reality. This whole symbolic perspective of his work dynamizes - and aerates - the visual forms/objects/proposals that, as if avoiding the dangers of merely denoting information and messages, are presented within the strict characteristics or physical properties of the objects of art placed in circulation; not before long perfecting something to keep freedom in activity: "The art of my time. I'm in a hurry." (E-mail art).
Indeed, similar to other important Brazilian artists, Bruscky also follows the precept of quantity as food and vital élan (which Villa-Lobos advocated so strongly), and which explains that his large idea bank diaries are still nurseries of works yet to be done, projects that await possible moments of execution (even if the artist himself makes it clear that "I only believe in reincarnation because I have too many ideas for a short life.")
Take II
At this almost promiscuous crossroads of aesthetic codes, in which "art is a means without a place" (Pedro A. Cruz Sánchez), the poetics of Paulo Bruscky is aimed more at creating relationships than visual orders; and therefore does not legitimise essence, but rather relation, or the tension of the limits is established as a field of work, as the condition and context. Hence the versatility of the approaches and the mobility of the language/languages, and likewise the attention to various aesthetic boundaries.
Some fields detected by this curatorship are directed towards the territory of traffic, of our movements. In a time of speed-worshipping as vaticinated by Paul Virilo, or of non-places, according to Marc Augé and his categorization of bordering spaces, of everyone and no-one, Bruscky arrives bearing signs that ironize this existential status, placing a warning-piece at the gallery entrance: Atenção cuidado com o vão entre o trem e a palavra (Caution, mind the gap between the train and the word) (2008), which could also be a gap between language and the world. On this imaginary line, there is a fundamental declaration that invites us to recognise and enter the interstice of an aesthetic glance.
Viagem numa paisagem de Magritte (Journey in a Magritte Landscape) (1979), an old video that is transformed into an installation exhibited in a rear-view mirror, made up of other metalinguistic reflections, constantly present in the artist's work: Arte passado a limpo (Fair copy of art) (2008), O olhar dos críticos de arte I (The view of art critics I) (1978) and II (2009), Poímã (2006) or Homenagem a Klebinov (Homage to Klebinikov)(2008).
The works which express concerns with the communications system and its legal representation of reality belong to another privileged section of this exhibition. The artist, always attentive to the perverse effects and noises of the entropy and factual over-codification of messages and information systems offers us alternative registrations/interventions: Classificados (Classifieds) (2007-2009), E-mail art (2000), which speak to the notion of networking. In this sphere, the installation Ensaios (Tests) (2009) stands out, presenting information as a pulverised fragment and its representational scale in another visual regime. The title and human-sized test tubes harbour a paradoxical situation, and another far from casuistic interpretation. As does the gigantic Quebra-cabeças (Jigsaw Puzzles) (2009), a parody of the composition and semantics of the news, its place and form (with echoes of the Mallarmean throw of the dice).
O meu cérebro desenha assim (My brain draws like this) (2007), a different version of the 1976 work, restates the relationship between science and the mind, dreams and drawing, in a sui generis aesthetic machine, which would charm both Freud and Goethe at the same time. The graphic and chromatic results of this video-performance with the electroencephalogram bear an extremely free declaration of the human condition. A piece that would also lie on the post-human boundary: in the speculation and dialogue between the conscience and the senses.
The emblematic installations Boa noite (Good night) (2007) and Fontes (Springs) (1982/2009) also represent a psycho-sensorial exploration. Both consist of synaesthetic experiments: The former with mosquito-killing sentinels, a nocturnal work of climatic visibility, which is a real will-o'-the-wisp in its ashy activity. The latter is an ars sonora piece - another branch of the artist's work - which projects an imaginary reality of water from various springs around the world. The infinite that always contains water acquires a finite form here: a loudspeaker structure that emits sounds like that of a picturesque fountain.
Take III
Against the cognitive and semantic establishment, Bruscky's poetics produces a depragmatization of language, of its encoded references, promoting an expansiveness, just as there is a trend to treat the image as an event, a happening and not a mere object or product.
If his aesthetic interest is meta-political (see the volume of the artist's book Guia dos Estados do Brasil [A Guide of the States of Brazil] (2008), a metaphorical map of the violence in Brazil completely bound up) this is due to his own critical affirmation containing a perceptive subversion of the administrated world, a malleable ontology to be defended that results from the "cooperative development of the sense", of our implication. Relational, living art, which is intersected, possible, alert; expanding the idea of a conceptual, off-the-wall art which makes use of several contexts and mediations to construct its meanings, and pins down our most personal collaboration.
Rio de Janeiro, October 2009
Adolfo Montejo Navas |
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