184
Untitled from the series Right You Are…If You Think You Are, 2003. Photograph. 47 1/3 x 87 1/2 in. (120 x 222 cm.).
political economy and a transmutation of values. Homage to Fontana, 1967, first prize winner at the Tokyo Biennial that year, substituted an industrial mark for the pictorial one, a zipper that demystified the relationship between art and industry (the artist, by the way, has a technical background). His later work on Brazil’s hegemonic constructivism in the series Countryside Constructivism, 1999, an ironic critique of pictorial models, especially those from concretism, comprises geometric compositions made on oxen hides. As a genre of expression references to the history of art are found in many works, in readings of, or interventions on Leonardo Da Vinci (Holy Suppers), Fontana, and Duchamp, for example. In fact, a true bestiary can be found in this poetics, as revealed by Leirner’s series Clonation, Sotheby’s, and all of his Great Parades. Some recent emblematic works deserve special mention, however, such as The Table and Its Belongings, (2002), originally presented at the last São Paulo Biennial. In its latest version, Leirner has added two life-size figures of Venus to this piece, which, besides
creating a state of visual and cultural perplexity, generate yet another moment of visual suspicion. In a kind of minimalist serialism where the notion of play is suspended, the purity of certain materials (the Plexiglas table and the acrylics) arranged serially (balls and racquets) is completely subverted here and serves to reveal the game not as opaque but as transparent, and to point out that it should not end too soon: the returning ball is, somehow, always with the viewer. On the other hand, the recent series of maps titled “Right You Are...If You Think You Are,” (2003) creates a resignification: a transfer of meanings and symbolic negotiation amid cartographies that bring the game of representation to the fore. These post-colonial maps are a true cloning of current contemporary representation, both cultural and political; presented with an imaginary taken from the public domain and Pop Art, almost innocent in appearance, they are similarly removed from all ideological declarations but not from the possibility of critique: colors and symbols are interchangeable between
the First and Third Worlds, and the maps are disorienting. Perhaps the most recent piece is Untitled (2003) (according to the artist it is ideal to move around biennials, suggesting a public art work that is not devoid of irony), the new Duchamp bicycle that receives yet another well-aired rereading and passes, an icon in movement, for a popular three-wheeled cart. In this case the asymmetry is not formal, since in fact Nelson Leirner’s four wheels roll their idiosyncrasy anywhere. And one does not doubt Duchamp would have enjoyed a little ride! It can be said that Nelson Leirner’s work brings together a large number of artistic elements and keeps them in a state of continuous processing; it can be said as well that his trajectory is marked by the continued displacement of a modus operandi. But if one had to choose one conceptual triad, even if only to short-circuit its signs, it would be the one formed by appropriation-kitschminimalism. Irony—a key element of postmodernity and an “old friend” of the artist’s—is always ready to unveil the paradox at the core of all visuality.