CHARLES LONG paradigm lost
Laura Lima
I hope this finds you well. is the first gallery exhibition in the United States of Brazilian artist Laura Lima. This catalogue was created on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York on view from February 21 through April 4, 2019. Since the mid 1990s Lima’s practice has been a domain for transgression—continually escaping traditional classifications, her work attempts to visually articulate a personal glossary of concepts that the artist has worked and reworked over the course of her career. The conceptual structure of Lima’s work is underpinned by the equation “Man=flesh/ Woman=flesh.” First conceived by the artist in a group of works by the same name, the concept of “Man=flesh/Woman=flesh” transcends hierarchies and explores the binary of the living and non-living. For Lima there is no hierarchy: humans, animals, and even spaces are tethered to the same plane, as matter, flesh, or bodies. I hope this finds you well. presents four distinct bodies of work that subvert common classification and invite the viewer to look again and re-conceive the established language of art. The exhibition insinuates communication involved in an effort to achieve something, be it a certain understanding or the act of translation; taking on concepts of adaptation and metamorphosis as a result of translation from one body to another. In addition to the gallery exhibition, this catalogue also includes a selection of Lima’s major institutional exhibitions, featuring important works in her practice, Horse Takes King, Gala Chickens, Bar Restaurant, and The Naked Magician.
I hope this finds you well. Tailor Shop
A fully functionally tailor workshop, previously shown at Pinacoteca (Octágono), São Paulo, Brazil in 2018 and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands in 2014.
Nomads
Portrait masks painted by a copyist employed by the artist
Wrong Drawings
Drawings made of cotton and charcoal, dating far into the future
Museum exhibitions Horse Takes King
Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2018
Gala Chickens
Performa 15 in 2015, XI Lyon biennial in 2011, and Jardins do Poder, Brazil in 2007
Bar Restaurant
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland in 2013 and Bonniers Konsthall, Stocholm, Sweden in 2014
The Naked Magician
SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen and Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2015, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden in 2014, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland in 2013, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York in 2011, and Casa França, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2010.
I hope this finds you well.
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Occupying the first-floor gallery is Lima’s ongoing work Tailor Shop, a fully functional tailoring workshop. In the workshop, a team of local tailors work to produce a collection of garments, creating portraits that translate and interpret the artist’s ideas based on their own experiences and knowledge. The vestments created for each work are based off of abstract portrait drawings Lima has made of friends, family, historical figures, and people who have inspired her, and are titled after the first name of the individual. In what the artist refers to as Instances, Lima constructs the work through other people who perform the tasks she has designed; feeding off of chance, while also creating a dialogue between artisanal labor and the art-making process, and the exhibition spaces and use of objects. Drawing upon the concepts outlined in “Man=flesh/Woman=flesh,” Lima considers the artisans as matter occupying the space in the same way as the objects, furniture, and architecture, which work together to communicate and translate her concepts. Tailor Shop develops and modifies as it is happening; in a constant state of becoming, the installation encourages visitors to observe the process of art making throughout the duration of the exhibition and to come back to see the progress evolve. As the exhibition unfolds, the completed garments made by the tailors become individual works and are hung on the walls of the gallery for display.
Installation view, Tailor Shop, Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018. Photo: Isabella Matheus
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Installation view Tailor Shop, Pinacoteca, SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, 2018. Photo: Isabella Matheus
Laura Lima PINACOTECA DO ESTADO / ESTAÇÃO PINACOTECA On entering the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo’s vast Octagon Space, one saw multiple workstations for various activities related to clothing production: reviewing template models, cutting and sewing fabrics, displaying a garment for a fitting. Likewise, the materials and tools of the tailoring trade, from spools of thread and rolls of fabric to pincushions, scissors, and sewing machines, were everywhere. Within this setting, Laura Lima’s Alfaiataria (Tailor’s Shop), 2014/2018, brought together a group of real-life tailors and
sewn seams. Fitted to a large rectangular frame, the garment’s central red fabric, Flanked by two elongated black-and-white striped triangles, displayed three almondshaped
openings
that
revealed
the
support
below.
Though the abstract portraits varied in style and texture (at times harboring veiled references to art history), this one evoked the sartorial trappings of a harlequin, presenting a re ned version of the figure’s motley pattern through its exaggerated geometries and elegant white running stitch.
seamstresses to create made-to-measure clothes modeled on the artist’s designs. But rather than clothing people, the ensuing garments covered empty frames. Stacked against a wall awaiting their individual “fittings,” the frames, with their irregular shapes and monochromatic mounting boards, recalled modernist abstraction and the experiments with the shape of the support undertaken by the mid-century Argentine movements Arte Concreto-Invención and Arte Madí. But the tailors’ and seamstresses’ work with fabrics and frames was geared toward another end: the production of non figurative “vestment portraits” with proper names for titles, among them Zezé, Marilina, and Ernestina (all 2018), in reference either to invented figures or to real individuals the artist knows. Unlike the first installment of Alfaiataria, at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 2014–15, where the finished portraits were hung on white gallery walls, at the Pinacoteca the works, once completed, were transferred to an open storage system in the same octagonal space. In other words, the public was invited not to see finished artworks in a conventional display but to witness their making over the course of the exhibition’s three months, displacing the aesthetic focus from objects to processes, from product to production. One of the first pieces completed by Lima’s garment workers was Lúcia, in which fabrics of different colors and textures are combined through machine- and hand-
Active agents in the production of Lima’s work, the tailors and seamstresses were what the artist calls the viventes (livers) of the experience, as curator Fernanda Pitta explained in the opening wall text. This nomenclature recalled the writing of Guy Debord, who used an identical term in his 1957 Report on the Construction of Situations, a foundational Situationist text. He wrote: “The role of the ‘public’ . . . must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new meaning of the term, ‘livers,’ will increase.” For Debord, these viveurs engaged the capacity to revolutionize life, while Lima’s stated goal was to draw attention to it—that is, to the body’s movement, to concentration and fatigue, as well as the physiology of flesh, its temperature, sweat, and smell. That said, Alfaiataria inevitably engaged questions of labor. The Pinacoteca building’s original function served to enhance the link to tailoring: It used to house the São Paulo School of Arts and Crafts. And it is located near the Bom Retiro neighborhood, home to a robust tailoring tradition still evident in streets filled with textile shops and clothing stores, many owned for generations by immigrants to the city. By using living beings, workers, as both the subject and object of her exhibition, Lima asked visitors to observe and think about labor, its value, the materials out of which objects are made, and the forces that give objects form—both within and beyond the frame of art. —Kaira M. Cabañas
Installation view, Tailor Shop, Pinacoteca, SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, 2018. Photo: Isabella Matheus
In Laura Lima’s Nomads, she employs a copyist to paint replicas of centuries-old landscape paintings. Operating under Laura’s instruction, the copyist subtly modifies and translates the scenes, sometimes removing people or replacing the original vegetation with samples copied from botany books. Lima then folds and cuts the canvases, displaying these translations of paintings from the past as masks or portraits concealing the face. By removing subjects from these scenes, the humans can be imagined behind the eyes of the mask. Drawing upon what the artist calls “Ornamental Philosophy,” Lima challenges the conventional view of ornamentation as something extraneous or unimportant, while also addressing these forms of translation and subjectivity that are still open to exploration. Firmly grounded in Lima’s poetics, the exhibition calls into question fixed identities and classification through the exploration of communication from one body to another.
Nomad 2018 Acrylic on shaped canvas
“Working with living beings is always risky, it is a fragile, political thing.�
” —Laura Lima
Lima’s ongoing group of works, Wrong Drawings are composed of natural cotton with pieces of charcoal attached to them; over time, the coal begins to dye the works. In a continual state of fluidity the works are dated far into the future, suggesting an eventual time when they may reach completion. Charcoal as matter is comprised of carbon, the building block of life and all living constituents. Casting the works as a memory of the future, Lima again explores the mutability of her artworks by setting the stage and directing the action of the matter to translate and execute her will.
Wrong Drawing 2034 2018 Cotton, coal and wood
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Museum exhibitions
Horse Takes King, Lima’s site specific exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, Milan in 2018, included three major works: Bird, Pendulum, and Telescope. Each work was conceived with the particular geometry and architecture of the space in mind. Referencing the title of the exhibition, each work takes on different roles in the game of chess. The bird stands in for the horse, the astronomy class becomes a space for collective inquiry and thought, and the pendulum represents the challenges the game presents. The King, having an imaginary but powerful presence, is the central protagonist.
Pendulum 2018 Photo: Mattia Balsamini
In Gala Chickens, Lima adorns chickens with a colorful array of feathers. Housed in a sculptural coop, the hens begin to change their behavior as they interact with each other. As the artist states, ”I am more interested in the intricate social relationships, the exchange of behaviors that in time serves to alter our perception of the quotidian, the every day.” Gala Chickens has been exhibited in New York for Performa 15 in 2015, XI Lyon biennial in 2011, and Jardins do Poder, Brazil in 2007. Gala Chickens will be on view at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center as part of the exhibition Creatures curated by Steven Matijcio, May 3 - August 18, 2019.
Gala Chickens 2004, 2007, 2011, 2015 Photo: Cadu d’Oliveira
Laura Lima’s Bar Restaurant initially appears to be an empty cafe, only occupied by a waiter. Upon closer inspection, colorful geometric blocks, clay masses, rocks, and other objects are revealed as the guests of the restaurant, filling the seats of the cafe. As time passes, the beer and wine filled glasses are mysteriously emptied, as if they are being consumed by the guests. The waiter continuously tends to the guests, refilling each glass as they empty. This work is another example of Lima’s ongoing investigation into the communication between one body or object to another, breaking with the traditional classification and hierarchy of living begins and objects. Bar Restaurant has been exhibited at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden in 2014, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland in 2013, and Art Basel Miami Beach in 2010.
Bar Restaurant 2010/2013 Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich
The Naked Magician is an immersive environment created by the artist using a variety of collected materials such as gadgets, books, tools, and instruments. Lima creates this world for a hired “magician”, who is continuously wandering through the scene, creating new objects and altering objects that were placed in the space. The magician adds an element of unpredictability to the work, constantly transforming and changing the surroundings and the objects within it. This work has been exhibited at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen and Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2015, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden in 2014, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland in 2013, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York in 2011, and Casa França, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2010.
The Naked Magician 2010/2011/2014/2015 Photo: Sérgio Araújo