In Orbit

Vicente de Mello

From May 25 to Aug 06 2018

lapidary (lap.i.dar.y) n. Artist who forms stones, minerals, or gemstones.

"The realization of the series Lápidus consisted of meeting stones from my own collection, which I collected in various regions of the world, over 35 years.
Collecting is about putting together favorite things for no apparent reason, making them special because of a personal story that no one else knows about. But once these stories are not revealed, the result is something sad, restrained - saving is losing of sight of things. "
Vicente's stones were organized in dreamlike compositions, in order to create small agglomerations that refer to the official images, created by the space agencies, of the representation of groups of asteroids.
The Lápidus are photograms, singular images by the photographic process realized without camera and without negative, and consists of the simple impressions constructed by the velatura of the direct light that occurs by the contact of objects on the surface of the photographic paper.
With the placement of the stones on the photographic paper, the shape of these is achieved by obstructing the passage of light on its surface, without relief and volumes, as a white "drawing" on the black background, which is the emulsion burned by the light in laboratory, where the role revealed is the end result.
The stones do not repeat themselves. The stronger ones do not let their contours reflect, while lightness and unpredictability occur with the clearest and most transparent.
Lápidus was performed in two moments, the first in 2014 with 13 frames and the second in 2017, with 9 frames.
In a large table, 2.50 m long, the stones will be arranged in the exact position of the composition of the frames, recreating a model in a scale of 1: 1. The volume of the stones will be revealed by a single intense focus of punctual light that is at one end with its flaring projection beam, which as well as the sun, the bright effect occurs in the nearest, and penumbra in the more distant.

 

About the artist

Vicente de Mello was born in São Paulo on 1967. He lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in Social Communication by Universidade Estácio de Sá and specialized in History of Brazilian Art and Architecture, at Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro – PUC/RJ. Worked at Photography Department of Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro – MAM/RJ, from 1989 to 1998. Vicente has his own photographic research dated since 1992.

He has exhibited and belongs to relevant collections, such as Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro; Espace Photographie Contretype, Bruxelas, Bélgica; Fondation Cartier pour l´art contemporain, Paris, France; Fundação DAROS, Zurich, Switzerland; Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France; MALBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo - MAC / USP; Museu de Arte de São Paulo - MASP - Coleção Pirelli; Museu de Arte Moderna Aluísio Magalhães, Recife; Museu de Arte Moderna de Brasília; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection/MAM - RJ; Joaquim Paiva Collection, Rio de Janeiro; José Olympio Pereira , São Paulo; José Roberto de Figueiredo Ferraz Collection, Ribeirão Preto; Lhoist Collection, Brussels, Belgium; and SESC, São Paulo.

 

In Orbit | Ivo Mesquita

The photographer Vicente de Mello has been developing in the last ten years projects in which photography stops being language and starts being it’s own matter. In “Pli selon psi” (2009-2017), Death Valley (2014), Ultramarino e Fugitivo (both in 2015), photography is just an image of his archive reproduced in wheat-paste, wallpaper or tile for integrating in an architecture ou disappearing transformed in installation environments that promote, for beyond the observer’s sight, it’s interaction with the image in space, no longer recognized after multiplied and manipulated.

This “expanded photography”, in the artist’s words, represents for him the possibility of other sensitive experiences with the image, as it amplifies the possibility of his own practice in the meaning of research about the nature of photographic image, it’s materiality, history and meaning.

The series “Lapidus” (2014-2017) is made of 22 photogram with black and white images, that “appropriate” from pictures of asteroids taken from satellites and spread by spacial agencies, accessible in lots of medias. From start, they seem to recapture not the form, but the imaginary enunciated by Vicente in the series Galáticas (2009), photographs taken of chandeliers, lamps and neons that, because of it’s framing, composition and light and shadow, resemble celestial bodies and evoke documental images or fragments of illustrations for sci-fi.

Lapidus ("of stone"), however, goes beyond this reference for working with memory and imagination, playing with the photographic process and with the perception of photography between reality and fiction. Starting from small groups of his wide collection of rocks – from different parts of the planet, gathered thought 35 years – and photographic paper, Vicente produces images that translate between some kind of cartography of asteroids that travel through the stellar space and modern abstract paintings, notably by the velvet character of the compositions surfaces. They are unique photograms, produced by the placing of the rocks directly over the photographic paper, followed by their exposure to light, like glazing, without mediation of lens or negatives. At lab, as revealed paper, an abstract drawing arises with the plated contour of the rocks, white over black.

The ludic and fantastic character suggested by these images is, although, far away from something accidental like the asteroids trajectory in space. It is about a planned project, controlled in every step by the artist: the selection of rocks, the creation of “asteroid groups”, the construction of a landscape, the time of exposure to light.

In “In Orbit”, the table at the center of the gallery, the rocks chosen and organized following pre-established formal relations, are exhibited in the exact position of each photogram, re-creating a model in 1:1000 scale of the asteroids in space, just as seen in “official” photographs. It constitutes a species of archive, a organized way of cataloging the rocks in the collection – time and memory – and showing the set of blue prints/models, the original drawing, the created and captured reality in each one of the photograms that Vicente invents fragments of cosmic landscapes. 

It’s the revelation of the artifice, a kind of a crime  evidence. But those images can’t be taken as a resigned irony before the vortex of images in contemporary visuality, but as an affirmative gesture of the joy of playing with them and throwing the imagination in orbit, beyond the images.

 

Ivo Mesquita is a researcher, writer and independent curator. Worked as chief-curator (2006-2012) and artistic director (2012-2015) at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; visiting professor at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Nova York (1996-2007); artistic director at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2000-2002); chief-curator for the São Paulo Biennal (1999-2000 e 2008), where Ivo also worked as researcher and assistant curator (1980-1988). As an independent curator (1989-1998), worked and collaborated with institutions as Winnipeg Art Gallery (Canada), Museo Reina Sofia (Madri), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA) and Fundación “La Caixa” (Barcelona), Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), National Gallery (Canada), Museo de Arte Latinoamericana de Buenos Aires (MALBA) and Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, among others. Lives and works in São Paulo.