Hélio Oiticica | Neville D’Almeida
25 November 2005 - 30 January 2006
Malba Colección Costantini
3415 Figueroa Alcorta Avenue
C1425CLA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
t: 5411 4808 6500 f: 5411 4808 6599
CC – Programa in progress
Curator: César Oiticica Filho
Momentos frames – CC5 Cosmococa 5 Hendrix-War, New York, 1973. 10 fotografías color sobre papel montadas sobre aluminio, 114 x 76 cm.
Malba presents Hélio Oiticica / Neville D´Almeida CC Program in progress, the first major exhibition in Argentina of Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro, 1937-1980), one of the most important Brazilian artists to the Geometrical movement and to the local avant-garde in the sixties. His work includes paintings, objects, environments, cinematographic experiences called “Quasi-cinemas” and photographs.
This exhibition includes four of the eight Cosmococas which Oiticica and the filmmaker Neville DAlmeida conceived in the seventies while living in New York. These pieces consist of a group of environments with slide projections and sound tracks. They are intended to renovate cinematographic language by means of playful environments where viewers become participants in a sensorial experience. They are also a reflection on contemporary music and pop culture: each one is dedicated to a figure such as Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Luis Buñuel and Yoko Ono.
In addition to the four Cosmococas, the exhibition includes a group of color-print photographs of some of the images that are projected in the environments, such as Quasi-cinemas.
These pieces encapsulate several of Oiticicas fundamental concerns including the dissolution of the traditionally passive relationship between the cinematographic image and the viewer; the connection between still and moving image, between art and popular cultural; public participation in art work and the blending of art and life into a superior experience.
All of the pieces exhibited in Malba are courtesy of the Projeto Hélio Oiticica (Hélio Oiticica Project), a Contemporary Art Center in Rio de Janeiro created in 1981 with the objective of conserving and promoting Oiticicas art.
With the Hélio Oiticica / Neville D´Almeida CC Program in progress exhibition, Malba proposes to contribute to the dissemination of this lesser-known yet crucial phase of Oiticicas work by presenting a group of his Cosmococas. In these New York installations of the 1970s developed in collaboration with Brazilian director Neville D´Almeida and which are part of Oiticicas works connected to film, grouped under the name of Quasi-cinema the artist incorporated the cinematographic image as an instrument of experiment, as a new form of fragmented language, as a means of reflection on the modes of production of subjectivity in post-industrial society, as a tool for a critique in progress, states Eduardo F. Costantini Jr., Executive Director of Malba.
Cosmococas and momentos frames
In 1959, Oiticica -along with Lygia Clark, Amílcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, poet Ferreira Gullar and others- were part of the neo-Concretism movement in Rio de Janeiro. In the late sixties, Oiticica becomes a crucial figure in the Tropicalism movement.
In the early seventies, he moves to New York, where he begins to experiment with the cinematographic image. He is steeped in the New York scene at the time and produces the group of works entitled Quasi-cinemas, which include the installations Block Experiments in Cosmococa. Within this group, the Cosmococas are a crucial sub-group, four of which are in the Malba exhibition.
Influenced by Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of perception and other theories, Oiticicas writings from the seventies indicate that he begins to suggest a new cinematographic language – the product of experimentation, understood as a way to free oneself from the viewers submission to film and from the supposed linearity of films language.
Based on sequences of photographs that he calls Momentos frames, Oiticicas work interferes with the linear time of film to constitute a photographic strip that recounts the process of creation. This gives rise to the concept of Quasi-cinema.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Brazilian Embassy.
To purchase the catalogue, please visit Tiendamalba at www.malba.org.ar/web/latienda.php or call 5411 4808 6550.
Malba Colección Costantini
3415 Figueroa Alcorta Avenue
C1425CLA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Malba presents Hélio Oiticica / Neville D´Almeida CC Program in progress, the first major exhibition in Argentina of Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro, 1937-1980), one of the most important Brazilian artists to the Geometrical movement and to the local avant-garde in the sixties. His work includes paintings, objects, environments, cinematographic experiences called “Quasi-cinemas” and photographs.
This exhibition includes four of the eight Cosmococas which Oiticica and the filmmaker Neville DAlmeida conceived in the seventies while living in New York. These pieces consist of a group of environments with slide projections and sound tracks. They are intended to renovate cinematographic language by means of playful environments where viewers become participants in a sensorial experience. They are also a reflection on contemporary music and pop culture: each one is dedicated to a figure such as Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Luis Buñuel and Yoko Ono.
In addition to the four Cosmococas, the exhibition includes a group of color-print photographs of some of the images that are projected in the environments, such as Quasi-cinemas.
These pieces encapsulate several of Oiticicas fundamental concerns including the dissolution of the traditionally passive relationship between the cinematographic image and the viewer; the connection between still and moving image, between art and popular cultural; public participation in art work and the blending of art and life into a superior experience.
All of the pieces exhibited in Malba are courtesy of the Projeto Hélio Oiticica (Hélio Oiticica Project), a Contemporary Art Center in Rio de Janeiro created in 1981 with the objective of conserving and promoting Oiticicas art.
With the Hélio Oiticica / Neville D´Almeida CC Program in progress exhibition, Malba proposes to contribute to the dissemination of this lesser-known yet crucial phase of Oiticicas work by presenting a group of his Cosmococas. In these New York installations of the 1970s developed in collaboration with Brazilian director Neville D´Almeida and which are part of Oiticicas works connected to film, grouped under the name of Quasi-cinema the artist incorporated the cinematographic image as an instrument of experiment, as a new form of fragmented language, as a means of reflection on the modes of production of subjectivity in post-industrial society, as a tool for a critique in progress, states Eduardo F. Costantini Jr., Executive Director of Malba.
Cosmococas and momentos frames
In 1959, Oiticica -along with Lygia Clark, Amílcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, poet Ferreira Gullar and others- were part of the neo-Concretism movement in Rio de Janeiro. In the late sixties, Oiticica becomes a crucial figure in the Tropicalism movement.
In the early seventies, he moves to New York, where he begins to experiment with the cinematographic image. He is steeped in the New York scene at the time and produces the group of works entitled Quasi-cinemas, which include the installations Block Experiments in Cosmococa. Within this group, the Cosmococas are a crucial sub-group, four of which are in the Malba exhibition.
Influenced by Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of perception and other theories, Oiticicas writings from the seventies indicate that he begins to suggest a new cinematographic language – the product of experimentation, understood as a way to free oneself from the viewers submission to film and from the supposed linearity of films language.
Based on sequences of photographs that he calls Momentos frames, Oiticicas work interferes with the linear time of film to constitute a photographic strip that recounts the process of creation. This gives rise to the concept of Quasi-cinema.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Brazilian Embassy.
To purchase the catalogue, please visit Tiendamalba at www.malba.org.ar/web/latienda.php or call 5411 4808 6550.
Malba Colección Costantini
3415 Figueroa Alcorta Avenue
C1425CLA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
t: 5411 4808 6500 f: 5411 4808 6599 www.malba.org.ar
