Transcursos An exhibition from 13 November to 19 December 2012, under the curatorship of Tiago Mesquita
Shadows
Aline van Langendonck is an artist of this line. So far, I knew her works better. Made with recognisable figures, engraved in the simplest way possible. There would be chairs, houses, objects described almost as logos. The drawing style if economical and without many adjectives. In one work, the artist discovers a way to show the same chair from the front and from the back, using the same drawing. For this to be convincing, the graphic blot appeared in one form when seen from the front, and another one when seen from behind.
The drawing is so simple that it is often ambiguous. We saw these chairs as deformed and flat blots. They could be seen as an attempt to suggest an illusion of depth or of a boarded blot. In the drawing of a house seen from above, Aline synthesises the figure to the extent that the sketch is turned into a scheme of geometric shapes, juxtapositioned and lacking depth. We see, at the same time, the house and an almost abstract linear structure.
The figures suggested a deformation of standpoint. Mannerist artists of the 16th Century often resorted to unusual procedures for drawing the figure and also for planning space in their paintings. It becomes common to bring distortion of shapes or proportions. They use the idea as a method for the rekindling of illusion.
In the case of Aline’s engravings, this distortion of shape points to the opposite side, to an image that eliminates its illusionist future and presents her tricks.
In Aline’s recent works, we see that her interest is not that of enhancing the illusion, but rather showing the pictures as an easy method of apprehension. This is a description which is entirely mediated by imitators who hardly know how to take the place of what is imitated. A look that apprehends what is lost.
In this exhibition, she shows monotypes, sculptures, notebooks and a video. The sculptures are objects and staircases. More than simply objects to climb, they are also objects to look through, that show how our relationship with sight is mediated by other filters and contaminated by other lenses. Between one step and another, through a vertical plank of wood, and on the other the images are all marked by lines and strips. The view is framed, and the entrance of light and the perception of objects appear behind these obstacles which have framed some things and been superimposed on others. We live by taking glances between one thing and another.
The video Rio Grande is a sequence plan. Filmed from inside a train, it focuses on the view through the window with a strip in the middle. The landscape passes by quickly, and is interrupted by the marks on the window and the swaying of the carriage. The framing is closed, and the contrast between the light from afar and the darkness inside the train is strong. With light modulation, the field opens and shuts. We would never reach a clean image of external space, neither in alighting from the train. We see some remnants. The landscape is changing not only under the influence of the image capture device, but also through the contamination of other intermediaries. The glass, dirt, types of light. It is as if the artist filmed all the contaminations from any standpoint, which rejects the loyalty of the video.
The series of monotypes is made up of white shapes that come up behind black strips of different proportions. Like in the film, white appears as a smaller or larger field, coming from behind an opaque structure, a light that oscillates behind an obstacle to our vision. The white fields increase and decrease, modifying the relationship with the dark strip. Each monotype is like one frame of a film, a piece of celluloid. It is as if the drawing did not show the same image when seen through different lenses. A landscape prepared in Cinemascope, and the other with a closed lens. However, these forms of distortion are not more convincing methods of producing illusions. They are simply that – illusions, so much so that we do not see any figures on the monotypes, but rather simple relationships of light and shadow. In the images by Aline van Langendonck, the world never comes easily to us, just its shadows.
Tiago Mesquita
Transcursos – By Aline van Langendonck
Together with the exhibition of Júlio Martins da Silva, on the 1st floor of the Gallery, there is also an exhibition by Aline van Langendonck, an artist who participated in the programme of Artistic Residency of the Acaia Art Gallery in 2012, with the support of the Estação Gallery. Under the curatorship of Tiago Mesquita, the Transcursos exhibition brings together a set of works that address the possibilities of relations between categorisations, during dislocation in space.
This exhibition brings together the video by the title of Rio Grande, which was filmed along the commuter train lines operated by the São Paulo Metropolitan Train Company (CPTM), in and around Brazil’s largest city; a series of monotypes in which a black strip takes up space in different ways, and also suggests a division of images in sequence with breaks in linearity; drawing books which investigate variations of shapes of common objects; wooden objects installed within the beam of the exhibition room; and also the documentation of the research process and the work related to the period of residence in the studios of the Acaia Institute (for further information, please check out www.acaia.org.br).
Exhibition: JULIO MARTINS DA SILVA
Opening: 13 November at 7 p.m. (Guests)
Runs through to 19 December 2012, Mondays to Fridays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Estação Art Gallery
Rua Ferreira de Araújo, 625 – Pinheiros SP
Telephone: ++ 55 11 3813-7253
Press Information
Pool de Comunicação – Marcy Junqueira
Contacts: Marcy Junqueira and Martim Pelisson
Telephone: ++ 55 11 3032-1599
marcy@pooldecomunciacao.com.br / martim@pooldecomunicacao.com.br
Information:
Transcursos: An exhibition from 13 November to 19 December 2012, under the curatorship of Tiago Mesquita
