Raquel Garbelotti: the visitor, the invader

The title of the exhibition refers to our possible attitudes when dealing with spaces and other people; either as visitors or invaders, we cross over borders, negociate positions. The visitor, or the invader, refers to someone or something that affects us or is affected by us.

In her solo exhibition, the artist Raquel Garbelotti will present three cores of works that despite referring to different projects, once put together, may offer more complex accounts on issues like borders and neighborhoods, power and authoritarian systems.

In one of them, there will be a project she developed a long time ago at Mário de Andrade´s house basement, located on the corner of Lopes Chaves and Margarida streets in São Paulo, an inaccessible space for the house visitors when there lived the writer. Invited by Rosa Artigas, the space manager at the time, the artist developed an intervention project in the house basement – painting it black and working in collaboration with the photographer Mauro Restiffe who made an experiment about the light in the space. For the current exhibition at Galeria Marilia Razuk, Garbelotti worked in collaboration with the architect Bruno Massara Rocha constructing a 3D mockup in the basement to create a strategic visualization of the space that is not immediately given to the spectator: It is necessary to search for gaps in the mockup to be projected over the place and, this way, pointing again to the most inaccessible place in the poet’s house. Another work in this collection, entitled O Porão (The Basement), is a video with images made by photographer Mauro Restiffe registering just whatever the natural light going through recessed windows and vents revealed all along the day when the work was carried out. In the images one can see parts of the space but never the whole. It is up to the visitor to fill in the gaps – both for the mockup and the images offered as an invitation to the inaccessible space.                                                        

In the second core of works entitled Wind Fence, there is a mockup of the artist`s house taken by iron ore, raw material extracted from the state of Espírito Santo. A video shows this process of a powdered mineral invasion into the mockup. Both, video and mockup are meant to show the danger of modernity invasion and its developmentalist heritage as well as the impacts in the landscape and in people´s lives. In the video, the architecture of the entirely white house is revealed little by little while the mineral is coming into the house and taking the rooms. Wind Fence, therefore, refers to a fence that cannot stop the wind, but lets the mineral come in and invade all the houses and buildings in Vitória, Espírito Santo. To develop the mineral restraint and overflow strategy in the physical mockup, the artist worked with the architect Clara Sampaio.

Finally, in the last core the artist presents a series of COBOGÓS made of concrete developed in 1:5 scale invading the gallery space,recalling both the modernist heritage and the implementation of a modernist tropical model in Brazil, as well as its inverted developmentalism permissive to indiscriminate impacts and extractions. The functionless and out of scale COBOGÓS share the parts of space in the gallery, this way presenting situations of separation and neighborhood among the visitors.

About the artist

The artist has taken part in several solo and collective exhibitions as (2015) Do Objeto para o Mundo (From the Object to the World) – Inhotim Collection, curator Rodrigo Moura. INHOTIN, Brumadinho/ MG, Brazil. (2014) Anos 90 | 00 E Novíssimos (Years 90 | 00 AndTheNewest), Gilberto Chateaubriand’s Collection, Modern Art Museum Rio de Janeiro. (2011) Brutalidade Jardim (Brutality Garden), curator Kiki Mazzucchelli, Galeria Marilia Razuk, São Paulo. (2013) Tempo Suspenso – Prólogo  ( Suspended Time  - Prologue), curator Luisa Duarte, Brazil Art Fair, Miami, USA (2011) Juntamentz, 8th Mercosul Biennial. Ensaios de Geopoética (Essays in Geopoetics), Porto Alegre, Brazil, curator José Rocca.  (2011) Cinemaquete: Western. (2007) 7th Mercosul Biennial. Grito e Escuta (Scream and Listening), Projeto Capacete, Porto Alegre. (2011) 32nd Panorama de Arte Brasileira, CINEMA DE ARTISTA (Artist’s Cinema) – (publishing/ lecture), curators Cauê Alves and Cristina Tejo, Modern Art Museum São Paulo.  (2008) Estado de Exceção – Venha ver a Coréia (Ver Você), (State of Emergency – Come and see Korea (See You), curator Marcelo Resende, Paço das Artes, São Paulo.  Paisagem Sucessive (Subsequent Landscape), Casa Triângulo, São Paulo.  (2002) 25th São Paulo Art Biennial. (2001) Panorama da Arte Brasileira, São Paulo Modern Art Museum – MAM. (2001) II Mostra do Programa de Exposições, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo. (2000) 26th Biennial of Pontevedra, Spain, among others. Raquel Garbelotti is lecturer/ researcher at UFES, Brazil. Doctorate degree from ECA/USP.