I met Germana in 2008. Rodrigo Naves brought her to be the assistant curator of José Bezerra's exhibition.  She continues to work at Galeria Estação and has become a partner, counselor and friend.
I have always admired the artists whose works I have in my private collection. For years I had been thinking of putting together a show of Germana’s works, but she had other commitments and it was not the right time.
Now the time has come. Germana is producing a lot new works. She has a new studio. She is working with new fellow artists. In fact, she has begun a new phase. I was with her in the studio a few weeks ago. I wanted to see the works for the exhibition. I was happy to see the rich production, with color, works that capture the Germana of this particular moment in time.
I will not talk further about her work. Besides not being able to do the analysis she deserves, this will be the work of the distinguished curator Rodrigo Naves.
I am proud of this show, which has several meanings for Galeria Estação: affection, openness and recognition of the talent of this dear and great drawer, painter and sculptor. I hope you agree with me and enjoy everything she brings to us.

Vilma Eid

Germana Monte-Mór | Paths of the Imagination Curated by Rodrigo Naves 24th October 7pm - Opening Runs trough December 20th Galeria Estação

Germana Monte-Mór: paths of the imagination
Rodrigo Naves

I
The works of Germana Monte-Mór began to gain definition in the late 1980s, beginning of the 1990s. In addition to paintings and drawings made with asphalt, she also made photographs of great interest and tantalizing sculptures - for they were looking awkwardly for a relationship with her drawings and paintings - as well as various experiments with materials such as paraffin, lead, Dammar gum, marble, etc.
However, in attempting to recall the many works she has done, I find it difficult to escape from a kind of dark sediment made of a somewhat clear asphalt deposited on paper or canvas, which configures geological or organic aspects, both elements opposed to each other.
For Tiago Mesquita, "Germana's motives have something geological" (...) "indeterminate terrain" (...) "sand of the desert" (p.18). Paulo Sergio Duarte refers to her work as "amoeboid" figures (p.125). The two passages are found in "Da Cabra: Germana Monte-Mór". São Paulo: WMF editors. 2013.

II
The title chosen to name her book (Of the Goat), such unusual name for an art book was not accidental. The strangeness only dissolves when by browsing the publication we find the verses of João Cabral de Melo Neto:

Black is the hard on the bottom
of the goat. Of its own natural.
In the bottom of the earth there is a stone,
At the bottom of the stone, metal.

Black is the hard on the bottom
of nature without dew
which is that of the goat, that animal
without leaves, only root and stem.

which is that of the goat, that animal
of soul-core, of horny soul,
without gizzards, damp, lips,
bread without crumbs, just crust.

João Cabral's verses offer a metaphorical passage - it could not be different, since it deals with words - between living and organic beings (the goat) and mineral and inorganic beings (the stone), present in different ways, both in the works of Germana and in the poem of João Cabral. The rustic nature of goats, their ability to survive in extreme conditions of heat and cold, seems to give them the solidity and unity of the rocks.
Asphalt is a derivative of petroleum, not a mineral itself. It is a combination of hydrocarbons. Symptomatically, the ancient Romans, more connected to the empirical origin of this material than to their by-products - gasoline, grease, plastics - called it "stone oil", that is, petroleum. Thus much of Germana's work also transits between different states of matter, less metaphorically affecting the passage between the kingdom of the liquid things (the origin of living things) and the mineral.
Both the poet and the artist have a feeling close to the material world. João Cabral does not name an adjective ("negro") for nothing. It is the uniqueness of the means they employ - words and materials - that distinguishes them in a remarkable way, beyond any value judgment. And here we stop the comparisons so that the understanding of the works of Germana advances a little more.
In order for this most material experience of the world to become possible for the observer, it is decisive that the ambiguities between the various appearances of organic and inorganic matter present themselves to him. We know that cobblestones used in the pavement were made from blocks of granite. However, their geometrization - even if it is a bit rough (in Brazil they are made by hand), conspires that we perceive more its regular limits than its mineral rudeness. They ceased to be rock. In the same way, what remains of the leather of a shoe in an elegant shoe?
Germana's uncolored works oscillate non-stop. Their boundaries are irregular and refer to organic forms.
In this aspect, I tend to agree more with Paulo Sergio Duarte than with Tiago Mesquita, although I do not rule out the possibility that these qualifications are mere projections of the observer given the lack of definition of the artist's forms.
Meanwhile the asphalt surfaces have strong mineral appearance. The black areas are physically flat, although optically they suggest an enigmatic depth. As with the coffee grounds, one might read a person's fate in these films.
Also some of her photographic series maintain a strong bond with her asphalt works. The large rocks and the piles of salt showed at Galeria Carminha Macedo in 2010 (Soft stone) insist on this formal paradox; on the one hand, excessive stones, as seen from a low point of view that makes them about to roll or to overflow their physical limits. The large mounds of salt, however, suggest the shape of large white cones ... composed of minute and unstable grains.
In the exhibition named Luz negra (2009, Galeria Anita Schwarcz), another series of photos points in the same direction. The pebbles that rest on the bed of a stream of crystalline waters are softened when seen through the water. It is a phenomenon known as refraction of light, which occurs when the light passes from one transparent medium to another, with different densities, and changes the direction. When placed inside a container with water, a stick is seen in a discontinuously shape. A swimmer in a swimming pool with the waters in motion will look like a rubber man. Until that moment, Germana only took advantage of a physical phenomenon that almost all of us know. The presence of her artistic intuition will occur only when she matches brightness (reflected light) and refraction of light. At that moment, the pebbles deform and lose their wholeness. Once again, we observe the artist pursuing her demons, wanting to prove with different techniques and materials the existence of a resistant background in all experience of reality.

III
In only four exhibitions - Centro Universitário Maria Antonia (2002), Paço Imperial (2002-3), Mercosur Biennial (2005) and Estação Pinacoteca (2005) - the artist experimented with color. Still it was a shy job, since they had something of the light colors of the watercolor.
The more luminous presence of the colors in this show at Galeria Estação is a significant milestone in the trajectory of this important contemporary artist. Without giving up the difficult experience of a world that refuses to transform itself into a narrative, Germana adds to it a lightness, for by suppressing with colors a little of its weight and its impenetrability, she makes it more generous in its contact with the surrounding reality.
That said, the works also gain a new dynamic different from that suggested by the organic vitalism of previous works. The drawings are shown with a richer variation of planes, although only one or two colors at a time are brought to the coexistence with the asphalt. In turn, the figures, suggested by colors and asphalt maintain a less harmonious relationship among themselves.
They suggest depths, provoke each other, and weigh without elegance, until for a fleeting moment a configuration prevails, shows itself more firmly and submerges to start all over again. Somehow this description might serve to retrace part of Germana Monte-Mór's own trajectory. The attraction of the roughness of the world can suggest an existence conducted with difficulty and deprivation, although, as in the work of Van Gogh, leads to extraordinary and exemplary results.
I am by no means raising the possible "compensation" for a life of denial by means of a redemptive art. Many bastards were great artists. But there are artists - and Germana Monte-Mór is among them - for whom imagination plays a secondary role.
What is the "imagination” in visual arts? It may be the clear and bright world invented by Monet, when painting outdoors, "sur le motif" or the visionarism of Odilon Redon or Gustave Moreau. Because it is not an impression of the world - such as the Veronicas, the Holy Shroud, or the Roman mortuary masks - a work of art necessarily goes through the sieve of techniques (or artistic means) and a scheme (the imagination) that seeks to lead to realization from the always-nebulous intuitions of artists. There are moments, however - I think of Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, among many others - in which painters, sculptors, etc. believe they find the absolute freedom of the imagination to suspend any and all obstacles to reality. They proceed as the dove mentioned by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, which believed to fly more freely in a vacuum, when it is precisely the clash of its wings with the air that makes flight possible. Curiously, some of the greatest modern abstract painters - we take Mondrian and Pollock as exemplary opposites - incorporated the force of reality in a remarkable way. And to a large extent this was a condition for the greatness and pertinence of their works.

IV
Germana does not have the diversity of works of, say, Mira Schendel or Paul Klee. Barely comparing, Richard Serra and Amílcar de Castro also seem to have pursued the limits that a material (the steel) enabled them. And this may give the impression of little diversity to their works of art. Needless to say, the means at the disposal of the American were not even within reach of the Brazilian. Once in Rio de Janeiro Richard Serra said that had Amílcar had different working conditions he would have been an artist of international projection.
I suspect (but I'm not sure, it would be necessary to think more deeply about this) that artists moved by this rough feeling in the world also have a smaller margin of maneuver, which makes it difficult for their works to have a great diversity.
The group formed by Van Gogh, Amilcar de Castro, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra and the Brazilian Germana Monte-Mór, who is totally unknown outside the country and little known even among us - a situation that should be ashamed of the gallerists -, pursues a similar trait not necessarily indicating higher or lower quality.
What I see in common in their poetics is perhaps the impossible task of making a lyrical poem or an epic almost without resorting to the ordinary notion of representation, by presenting these materials so little distant from the reality by the technique as by representing them.

Galeria Estação
Presents

Germana Monte-Mór – Paths of the Imagination
Opening October 24, 7:00 p.m. to 20th December 2017

The artist Germana Monte-Mór has enthusiastically participated in the activities of Galeria Estação directed to self-taught Brazilian artists. She collaborated with Vilma Eid in conducting research and curating some of the exhibitions, contributing to the effort that eventually dissolved the barriers between the so-called "popular" art and contemporary production.
Galeria Estação opens its space to bring the artist's recent paintings in this exhibition curated by Rodrigo Naves. There are about 40 paintings that deepen the artist’s experience with color, unlike her more known series, in which, asphalt built light paths and shadows.
In only four previous exhibitions Germana had timidly employed color: Centro Universitário Maria Antonia (2002), Paço Imperial (2002-3), Mercosul Biennial (2005) and Estação Pinacoteca (2005). According to Naves, the most luminous presence of colors in this show at Galeria Estação is a significant milestone in the contemporary artist's trajectory. "Without giving up that difficult experience of a world that refuses to transform itself into a narrative, Germana adds lightness to it, for by suppressing with its colors a little of its weight and its impenetrability, she makes it more generous in their contacts with the surrounding reality, "says Naves.
For him, still, the works also gain a new dynamic, different from that suggested by the organic vitalism of the previous works. "The drawings present a richer variation of scheme, although only one or two colors at a time are brought to the coexistence with the asphalt".

Germana Monte-Mór (Rio de Janeiro, 1958) is a drawer, painter and sculptor. She has studied social sciences at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, fine arts at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado – Faap. She has also completed a masters degree in visual poetry at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo - ECA / USP. She was granted a scholarship from Vitae Arts Grant from the Vitae Foundation in 2014. She has been carrying out individual exhibitions in galleries since 1997 and in public institutions such as Capela do Morumbi - SP, Maria Antonia University Center - Paço Imperial - RJ and Estação Pinacoteca  - SP. She participated in the 5th Mercosul Biennial. Most recently she has participated in shows such as, MAC - USP no século XXI: a era dos artistas, SP and Modos de ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 years, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff, Oca, Ibirapuera, SP.

Exhibition: Germana Monte-Mór - Paths of the Imagination
Opening: October 24 at 7:00 p.m.
Visitation until December 20th, 2017
From Monday to Friday, from 11am to 7pm, Saturdays from 11am to 3pm
Free admission.
Galeria Estação
Rua Ferreira de Araújo, 625 – Pinheiros SP
Phone: + 55.11.3813-7253

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