Um Outro Lugar

A group show held in July at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo makes it clear that the focus has shifted to the flaws, the ruin of utopic propositions that now underlie Brazilian reality. Still, the muted palette of those days seems to orient the art of today, but with a twist, a degree of improvisation and a detachment, or better yet, a refusal of perfection. Cinthia Marcelle, Marcelo Cidade and Matheus Rocha Pitta all take an aggressive stance against consumer culture. While Marcelle alludes to the economic crisis with a shop window covered in bland brown paper, Cidade piles bricks in a shopping cart − a jab at real estate speculation − and Rocha Pitta shows a man packaged as merchandise in a savage economy.
In a more carnal vein, Amilcar Packer and Sara Ramo contrast the fragility of flesh and the brutality of concrete. He photographs himself front and back placed in the cracks of elevated freeways of downtown São Paulo and Ramo films herself paddling uselessly in buckets of water placed on her bathroom floor.