Pared ciega
Botner & Pedro
07 Abril de 2011 - 12 Junio de 2011
Curaduría: Taiyana Pimentel
A Gentil Carioca is an institution based in the historic center of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Founded in 2003 by artists Marcio Botner, Laura Lima, and Ernesto Neto, it was developed as an alternative space to the traditional market of contemporary art. By proposing the merge among the idea of art education and the public at the margins, with the commercialization of artistic products, this project has thrust the traditional idea of an art institution.
A Gentil Carioca has become a prominent point of reference for institutions in America, by way of taking on the responsibilities of an educational cultural center, working hard within the art market, while erasing the existing prejudices between the two conventions.
Hence, the value of the Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros (SAPS) to conduct a limited curatorship of an existing project in Rio de Janeiro, entitled A Wall with Kindness. A Gentil Carioca’s creative and educational concept of the “outer wall” will be displaced to the SAPS’s Proyecto Fachada. This curatorial proposal includes three projects by Brazilian artists produced between 2006 and 2008; these opposing views will be exhibited in the museum throughout 2011.
The first intervention for A Wall with Kindness is provided by the collaborative duo Botner & Pedro, entitled Blind Wall. Known for using basic editing techniques, Marcio Botner and Pedro Agilson show the video of one of the artist’s eye on a television screen.
Day and night the eye will move slowly watching everything that happens at Tres Picos Street in Polanco. This black-and-white video is reminiscent of psychological film, and especially of the influence of renowned filmmaker Mexican-Spanish Luis Buñuel, or the British Alfred Hitchcock. This gaze is from another time and placed in the only part of the Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros’ facade without windows, to the neighborhood. The video’s narrative will be developed through the relationship between the artist’s perspective and situations that occur outside of the building. Alongside with proposing new boundaries between the institutional and street, Blind Wall presents an artistic vision described by the collective “as the big guard the streets in the city.”