Objetos 1969-1970

Objects 1969-1970, the second solo exhibition by Vera Chaves Barcellos (1938, Porto Alegre, Brazil) at Zielinsky Barcelona, focuses on a series of objects developed as “open works”, as the artist usually calls when referring to these changing sets of engravings that require the viewer’s activation to come up with one of its possible combinations. There is no final and correct arrangement of the pieces, but there are different ways of displaying and ordering the set. On May 28 and June 13 the pieces in the exhibition are activated and new sets formed by moving the objects in other directions. The gesture of setting a date for the ensemble to unfold in other combinations and rhythms plays with the historical sense of the works conceived and produced by Chaves Barcellos so that they can be manipulated by the viewer, but also a way of setting a time/space of protection of a work carried out and separated from our present for more than fifty years. The fact of moving turns them into a non-paralyzed object, a gesture sought by many artists since the late 1950s. If we return to the Latin American context and the interests of neoconcretism, we identifyf key figures for the development of the viewer’s active experience with geometric forms: Lygia Pape and her “Livro da Criação” (1959) or her “Balé Neoconcreto” (1958); Hélio Oiticica and his “Relevos Espaciais” (1959-60) or “Núcleos” (1960-66); Lygia Clark and her “Bichos” series (1960-1964). The geometric contaminated with the relational of these previous years has been one of the starting points for the next generation in which Barcellos is a part along with other artists, who would combine geometric forms with the different conceptualist currents of the period. The shapes present in Vera’s objects are curvilinear, they are constantly mixing with their neighboring shapes, fitting and moving through the space of the paper and the wall. It is an organic and sensual geometry, not of opposition, but of circularity and action.