Opening November 12th
Wednesday to Saturday from 1 to 7 pm; Sundays from 11 am to 5 pm
In his installation Third Greyhound, Bruno Del Giudice transfers an ephemeral architecture commonly found at local fairs to the exhibition space. The simple operation of isolating and de-functionalising this construction typology of popular reminiscences reflects the artist's interest in the elements that make up the natural landscape of Latin American cities and their spaces of resistance. The canvases over the fair aisles are set up at dawn and removed in the afternoon, creating a mutant landscape regulated by an organic life cycle that defines the times of the market. For several years, Del Giudice has been studying the “counterfeit brands” that proliferate in fairs in different territories: from Resistencia (Chaco, Argentina), his hometown, to Asunción (Paraguay), the Triple Border (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay) and La Salada (Buenos Aires). Here the local and the global overlap and the symbols of globalisation are appropriated and re-signified according to the context. The light filtering through the pictorial installation brings back fragments of different brands that are not entirely recognisable, revealing the wishes and aspirations that gather around them, to give us back a pretence of originality in a mirror-like fashion. The project is part of the curatorial axis Ways of inhabiting, which links the different exhibitions of the third edition of BIENALSUR in Uruguay, bringing together reflections on the effects of urban transformations on the production of subjectivities and ways of life.
“Living between the sky and the sea”, “living the high life”, “live with style” are some of the appeals that burst disruptively into the corridor of the former prison of Miguelete, currently the EAC - Contemporary Art Space of Montevideo. Alan Oju appropriates phrases found on city billboards to promote real estate projects, decontextualising them and ironically using the neoliberal language of prosperity and meritocracy. Born in the outskirts of São Paulo, the artist transfers to the exhibition space the effects of the urban regulation that banned billboards on the streets of Brazil's capital for a decade after the passing of the “Clean City” law. By removing the figurative elements that usually accompany these advertisements, Oju turns each poster into an empty slogan, whose installation in the panoptic architecture of the ex-prison highlights the parallel between two modes of production of subjectivities: the control over bodies and the wishes prompted by the consumer system. The project is part of the curatorial axis Ways of Inhabiting, which links the different exhibitions of the third edition of BIENALSUR in Uruguay, bringing together reflections on the effects of urban transformations on the production of subjectivities and ways of life.
Photo: Bruno del Giudice
