Press Release
Victor Gorgulho
Roberto Alban Galeria is pleased to announce its new exhibition, the solo show by Raul Mourão entitled O menor carnaval do mundo, the artist's second exhibition with the gallery. This exhibition brings together a set of 44 recent works by the artist, from different series and fields of investigation of his vast production, which began in the second half of the 1980s.
Exponent of a generation that marked the Rio de Janeiro scene in the following decade, Raul Mourão is notably known for his multimedia production, which encompasses sculptures, paintings, drawings, videos, photographs, installations and performances. The artist frequently investigates the intersections between these fields and languages, stimulating multidisciplinary relationships in his practice, making use of a unique visual vocabulary and a peculiar sense of apprehending the reality that surrounds him.
Mourão's work thus feeds on trivialities and tokens of everyday life and his experience of the urban landscape, then interpreted and reconfigured by the artist in a process of elaboration of his views on them, as ingenious as perceptive, capable of reflecting on aspects that seem mundane and ephemeral to us, as well as on broader issues such as the country's socio-political context.
This flow between the individual and collective spheres takes place in a constant feedback loop between these poles, resulting in an artistic production of high inventive and linguistic caliber, in a state of continuous ebullition and renewal, while certain themes, elements and materials continue to appear in constant and varied experimentations within the artist's creative process.
In O menor carnaval do mundo, Mourão underlines his interest in different media and supports by showing recent works from different series of his productions, all of them developed in recent years. The set brings together new kinetic sculptures, paintings from his Janelas series, photographs and paintings from the SETADERUA series and videos such as Bang-Bang – work shown in April in his solo exhibition at Galeria Nara Roesler in New York city.
The title of the exhibition alludes both to a narrative, affective dimension – a carnival celebrated with a small group of friends, within the pandemic period – and to a certain game of scale proposed by the artist based on the work that names the exhibition. A sculpture made in two different sizes, the homonymous work shows Mourão's desire to experiment with small variations on the same theme or object, exploring the same idea in different but also complementary, unsuspected ways.
His Brazilian flags, for example - with their central circles and positivist "order and progress" mottos cut out - appear throughout the exhibition both in a small b&w fabric version (dedicated to the BaianaSystem group) and in a photograph taken by the beach in Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with Portuguese artist Tomás Cunha Ferreira.
Also noteworthy is the presence of the series Sem título, a delicate set of works made from sheets of waxed paper, oil and graphite, on which the artist makes different (circular, rectangular) incisions evidencing a desire for formal experimentation - although free and almost random in its execution - which precedes the making of the flags.
Mourão's desire to show his recent works through a transversal and heterogeneous approach reveals a dimension that has long been present in his practice, given that the artist is constantly experimenting and stretching the limits of his own creations, through games of scale, intentional repetitions, entanglements and unveilings of all kinds that invite the spectator to take an active role in the elaboration of reading keys that lead to an understanding of the whole.
At the entrance to the exhibition space, a kind of wall of contents brings together a varied list of works, underlining this sense of "organized puzzlement" proposed by Mourão, inviting us to enter his different series and fields of investigation with the suggestion of different possibilities of relationships to be traced between the various works. Thus, the artist does not guide us along fixed routes or precisely delineated paths. On the contrary, he gives us clues and signals that spontaneously suggest numerous routes to be taken through the exhibition rooms.
In the first exhibition room, two previously unseen kinetic sculptures emulate the shape of houses, referencing the domestic dimension of the carnival celebration alluded to in the title of the exhibition. On the walls, recent paintings from the Janelas series further reinforce the architectural thought at play in these works.
In these paintings, Mourão performs a series of small rectangular monotypes, made with the aid of a wooden support and black acrylic paint on a white canvas surface, forming grids that connect small "windows", sets of crevices and openings that suggest a movement of expansion of the space of the white cube, seeking to exceed it, to air it. In the words of curator and critic Clarissa Diniz:
"If we now live in a world that extrapolates us more than ever, given that it apprehends us into grids and distances, it seems that, by inviting us to participate in Menor carnaval do mundo, Raul Mourão is whispering to us about the transforming force of that which, reduced, can face the giants without calling their attention to what is happening."
Two other works shown at the exhibition, designed especially for the occasion, act as a synthesis of the artist's thought for the exhibition. Relixo (2021), a video collage made from the gathering and editing of excerpts of videos and films from the artist's own archives, made in recent years using devices such as cell phones and portable cameras. The action of turning to his own archive – a space of involuntary production of memory – highlights the desire to show materials that were previously stored and which, now handled and juxtaposed in a peculiar stream of fragments, come to life in a fast and sagacious montage that almost prevents us from digesting images of different natures, scenarios and origins. The artist's views on the world around him: prosaic and poetic, banal and extraordinary.
In a reverse movement – to transform something that is now in the public sphere into a private object – Mourão displays, on the second floor of the gallery, a box where he gathers smaller and adapted versions of some of the works in the exhibition (a previously unseen version of the Brazilian flag to be cut out by the collector, photo prints, texts and more), in an attempt to make a compact, portable and archivable version of the exhibition itself.
This relationship between the video and the box, therefore, proposes a keen reading of the artist’s chain of thought about his exhibition. After all, his own "smallest carnival in the world" is the catalyst for this game of unraveling and oscillating between spheres and semantic layers. A carnival reduced in size and execution, but surprisingly vast in its later ramifications and fruits.
Raul Mourão was born in 1967 in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives and works.
His main solo exhibitions and recent solo projects include: Empty Head, Galeria Nara Roesler New York (2021), A Máquina do Mundo, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2021), Estado Bruto, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (2020), A Escolha do Artista, Instituto Casa Roberto Marinho (2020), Experiência Live Cinema #4: Raul Mourão + Cabelo, Studio OM.Art (2019), Fora/Dentro, at the Museu da República (2018) , in Rio de Janeiro Brazil; Você está aqui, at the Museu Brasileiro de Ecologia e Escultura (MuBE) (2016), in São Paulo, Brazil; Please Touch, at the Bronx Museum (2015), in New York, United States; Tração Animal, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) (2012), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Toque devagar, at Praça Tiradentes (2012), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His recent collective exhibitions include: Coleções no MuBE: Dulce e João Carlos de Figueiredo Ferraz – Construções e geometrias, at the Museu de Ecologia e Escultura (MuBE) (2019), in São Paulo, Brazil; Modos de ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 anos, at Oca (2017), in São Paulo, Brazil; Mana Seven, at Mana Contemporary (2016), in Miami, United States; Brasil, Beleza?! Contemporary Brazilian Sculpture, at the Museum Beelden Aan Zee (2016), in The Hague, Netherlands; Vancouver Biennale 2014-2016, Canada (2014).
His works are included in the collections of important institutions, such as: ASU Art Museum, Tempe, USA; Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC-Niterói), Niterói, Brazil; Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.