Top Ten Booths at Brazil's SP Arte, A Fair That is Doing It All
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Loading... - Adriana Melo
- 22 Jun 2022
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SP-Arte, the Sao Paulo, Brazil-based event and arguably Latin America’s most important art fair, kicked off this week with a multifaceted display of art, collaborations, and new initiatives.
Though this is not the first SP-Arte since the beginning of the pandemic – they had a fair in October at a different location with only 70 galleries – this year’s edition feels like the rebirth as SP Arte settled into its traditional location at the Niemeyer-designed Fundação Bienal de São Paulo in Ibirapuera Park.
Few sported masks, but QR codes were everywhere. NFTs, which took off and thrived during the pandemic, were found at various booths at the fair. The general sentiment: We’re back!
“Even though we had the fair in October, coming back to the Pavilion has a different flavor,” Fernanda Feistosa, the director of the fair, told ARTnews. “Everyone seemed happy to see each other again, happy with the works. SP-Arte is the first fair of the year here, so it’s like opening season, everyone brings their best work.”
While SP-Arte is certainly an important social and business event – leading Brazilian actor Cauã Reymond was in attendance – the fair includes initiatives aimed at community building.
In editions past, SP-Arte supported curatorial labs where young curators were invited to curate a booth in an award competition. This year, the focus was on uplifting emerging artists and art platforms at Radar, which is tucked at the edge of the fair, just past a newly expanded design section of 30 galleries. Radar brings together artists who do not yet have gallery representation but have shown promise, either through an award, inclusion in a group show, or through their position as an artist’s assistant.
“Three of these nine artists are already in talks with galleries at the fair,” said Feitosa. “And that was our aim, that they are introduced to Brazil’s galleries.”
One of the artists featured in Radar will be granted a residency in Rio de Janeiro. Also at Radar are art platforms, that is, non-profit galleries like 01.01 that bring together Afro-Brazilian and African artists together, or Casa Chama, which mostly represents trans artists.
Take a look at the ten best boothes this year’s edition of SP-Arte has to offer:
1
Vivian Caccuri at A Gentil Carioca
A Gentil Carioca displayed a beautifully curated showcase of Brazilian artists attending to the country’s main thematic concerns: race, indigineity, the environment, and how these subjects collide historically and in contemporary life.
Vivian Caccuri’s Lexapro (2022) is one of her textile pieces. Long fascinated by the mosquito due to her research into 18th century Western description’s of diseases, the insect again makes an appearance here. The mosquito and human are both embroidered in transitory states, referencing the effect both species have had on each other’s genomes.
Other artists showcased at the booth include Aleta Valenta, Cabelo, José Bento, and Maxwell Alexandre, whose large piece Untitled (2021) makes an equally large impact. Alexandre’s painting has three layers, the white border, symbolizing the white cube of the gallery, a large yellow box, symbolizing the art, and two young black kids looking at the art. The sentiment here is that between the white spaces of the art world and the black community is the third color: that represented by art itself.
2
Antônio Oloxedê at 01.01 Art Platform
Iwin Igbo: O Espírito da Floresta (Jungle Ghost: Spirit of the Forest) at 01.01 Art Platform brings together Afro-Brazilian diaspora and African artists together in an examination of a spiritual nature deeply rooted in ancestral tradition.
The booth includes works by Antônio Oloxedê, the grandson of Mestre Didi, the famed and much respected Afro-Brazilian artist (a few of whose pieces could be seen at other booths). Working within the sculptural tradition that Mestre Didi pioneered as a response to his practice of Yoruba Egun, or ancestral worship, Oloxedê continues both a spiritual and artistic practice.
Alongside these pieces by Oloxedê are sculptures by Kuta Ndumbu and Moisés Patrício.
3
Jesus Soto at Galeria de Arte Ipanema
The Venezuelan artist Jesus Soto’s work is almost hard to look at. His kinetic sculptures, made up of thin wires, often set against a colored background, gently move and interact with color and light in such a way that tricks the eye.
His works were on view at Galeria de Arte Ipanema alongside Cruz Diez, another important Venezuelan artist whose paintings also played with optical illusion in his use of a textured canvas and gradients of color. The pairing was both traditional and effective, creating an almost whimsical space in the midst of endless booths.
4
Lyz Parayzo at Casa Triangulo
Lyz Parayzo’s series title Bixinhas is a double-entendre. While the title’s direct translation is “little beats,” it is also a commonly used slang for a queer person. Parayzo concieved of the works –wicked looking sculptures seemingly formed from saw blades – as the embodiment of the aggressiveness and assertiveness necessary to both destroy patriarchical systems but also to protect oneself as a queer person. A trans woman, Parayzo has made many of these Bixinhas in various forms and sizes.
On view at Casa Triangulo were also a set of three small Bixinhas that came in a steel box stamped Lyz Parayzo Jouets, or, Lyz Parayzo toys (Parayzo is based between Paris and São Paulo). Her work is held in major Brazilian collections, such as that of Casa de Cultura da América Latina in Brasília and Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. Read More...
