Exhibition "Barroco Sertanejo" | Individual Exhibition by Stênio Burgos

Caixa Cultural opens its 2022 programme with an individual exhibition Barroco Sertanejo, by Stênio Burgos 

 

On January 15, Caixa Cultural opens a solo exhibition of the artist and architect Stênio Burgos, curated by Denise Mattar. The exhibition Hinterland Baroqueprepared for Caixa Cultural de São Paulo, with itinerancy planned for Salvador, Recife and Fortaleza, is part of Realtopia. Therefore, images, poems and texts from both the original notebook, from 1984, and the retrospective of the same name from 2020 will be exhibited, creating a kaleidoscopic vision of the artist's thought and path, as well as the resonance of his work in the art circuit. 

 

REALTOPIA 

At age 30, surrounded by the effervescence of the 1980s, a time when the country was betting on change, Stênio Burgos participated as an architect in a group of prospective studies on possible futures, organised by the Club of Rome, a non-governmental association that exists to this day and has studied issues related to the environment and sustainable development since 1968. He had been invited to the project by Spanish diplomat Jose Luis Pardos Perez, then Director General of International Technical Cooperation, an organ linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The association's proposal was to listen to people from all over the world, so that their ideas could participate in the Forum Humanum, about popular technologies in Latin American homes. Contrary to academic formulations, Stênio Burgos presented his reflections in the form of a notebook containing drawings, poems and thoughts, which he named Realtopia. It was not by chance that the artist chose this same name to title his retrospective exhibition, held at the Fundação Edson Queiroz, in Fortaleza, curated by Olga Paiva. Foreseen to open in March 2020, the exhibition, like so many others in Brazil and around the world, can only open its doors, timidly, in September of the same year, without the right to a vernissage, commemorations or catalogue. 

 

The name Realtopia is, in itself, an invitation to reflection. A proposal to unite reality and utopia, without hiding facts or creating fantasies. The pages of the notebook contain affective observations, sensitive diagnoses and considerations on consumer society, which is seen as a circus, and described with rousing humour. The poems have flashes of political-poetic synthesis in constructions such as asphalt/asphalt, power/misery, tension/domination, but the document curiously lets us glimpse the paths of Stenio's future artistic work in sparse notes that are almost premonitions, such as: colour impulse, Dutch paints and Indian dye. 

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

José Stênio Burgos de Macedo was born in Crateús, on 11 April 1954. His father, Francisco Sales de Macedo, was a doctor and went to study in Bahia, where he met Sonia Belo Burgos. They married and moved to the hinterland of Ceará, where they had four children. Since he was a child he liked to draw, and that's where he chose to study Architecture, which he studied at the Federal University of Ceará, in Fortaleza. Still as a student he travelled to Paris, where he visited the museums, soaking himself in Art. On his return, he started working at the Central Bank, and after his graduation, in 1978, he got a transfer to Rio de Janeiro.  

In this period, he had intense contact with artists such as Paulo Roberto Leal and Alex Vallauri, among others; he witnessed the struggle for political change, the agitation, the frenzy and the party of the 80s Generation; but none of that went well with his work. He resigned in 1982 and returned to the countryside. It was a moment of recollection, of inner searching. A movement of solitude that he would repeat a few times in his life, as a resource for renewal. 

Realtopia was born after his return to Rio de Janeiro. The notebook arrived in Europe by the hands of the singer Fagner and opened the doors for Stênio to do his doctorate in architecture in Barcelona. During the almost three years he stayed in the city he studied painting, created still lifes, of which only a few remain, which, if they already foreshadow the strength of the artist's line, are far from showing the energy of colour that would come to characterise his work. 

Back to Ceará, in 1987, he lived closely with art through the sensitive eye of his friend Myra Eliane. During this period his creativity was expressed in architecture, interior design, in the search for objects and in the selection of works of art. The search for the rare and exclusive took him to the extreme south of the country, where he had a fundamental encounter with the master painter Iberê Camargo and his strong, dense painting, full of omens, full of the energy of the paints that accumulate, gushing directly from the tube. In 1998 there was a rupture and an epiphany. Stenio leaves town and isolates himself on the beach. Driven by a passion, little did he know he would be overwhelmed by another, more powerful, more absorbing and more imperative - painting. 

ROVING ACTION: 

CAIXA Cultural São Paulo - 15th January to 3rd April 2022 - Galeria D. Pedro II 

CAIXA Cultural Salvador - April 18 to June 19, 2022 - Pátio Gallery 

CAIXA Cultural Recife - 4 of July to 11 of September 2022 - Gallery 2 

CAIXA Cultural Fortaleza - 26th September to 20th November 2022 - Galleries 1 and 2. 

 

Service: 

Venue: Caixa Cultural São Paulo 

Opening: 15 January - 11am

Exhibition period: 15 January 2022 to 3 April 2022 

Address: Praça da Sé, 111 - Centro Histórico, São Paulo 

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 6pm 

Information: (55) 11 3321-4400