The sound that silence hides" exhibition

MAMMOTH ART GALLERY OPENS EXHIBITION

 AT ITS HEADQUARTERS IN PORTO ALEGRE

WITH DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO REPRESENTED ARTISTS

Mamute Art Gallery opens a new exhibition at its headquarters in Porto Alegre, on May 21, 5pm. The show entitled "The sound that silence hides" is curated by Henrique Menezes and presents a dialogue between two artists represented - Camila Elis and Fernanda Valadares.

Camila, representative of the new generation of artists from Rio Grande do Sul, studied at the University of the Arts London and is currently a Master's student in Visual Arts at USP. Through oil painting, she researches systems of interaction between objects, people, environments and abstract sensations.

Fernanda Valadares, from São Paulo, Master in Visual Arts by UFRGS, has been dedicated to the artistic practice for almost two decades, investigating through the millenarian technique of encaustic the spaces travelled and the temporalities.

Curatorial Text - "Thesound that silence hides

Bringing together the works of Camila Elis and Fernanda Valadares in a single exhibition could lead - through a primal analysis, based on the surface of what is seen - to reflection on the techniques rehearsed by the two artists. It would be rich enough to describe the pigments and the veils, the trace and the brushstrokes, to go through each invoice and the many layers sedimented in the epidermis of the work. Despite highlighting the quality of the processes, however, we would not be able to account for what I consider the success of this dialogue: the vibrancy, harmony and tone of the exhibition.

It is no wonder that these three terms have reverberations in the field of music as well.

In his lectures and writings, the experimental composer John Cage used to narrate an episode at the same time physical and poetic: once, when entering a chamber that simulated absolute silence, Cage perceived echoes of a low and a high sound. When he questioned a Harvard engineer about his sensations, he was promptly surprised by the answer: the high was his nervous system working; the low was his blood circulating. The body hides the sound, requiring an exercise of suspending all other senses to reveal its tones through attentive perception.

Recourse to the ambiguity of the word tone reveals us an index that brings hearing and sight closer together: it equally refers to the inflection of the voice and the intensity of the instruments, but it also denotes the qualities of colour in its various gradations, shades and nuances.

Camila and Fernanda are situated on the border between emotional release and the limits of rational disposition. In the near silence of a white base, Camila Elis composes works with chords of psychoanalysis and mythology, in which painting and drawing shuffle with imprecise strokes, often flanked by an intense red: a possible warning that her production is far from a docile, inert or slowly rhythmic appeal. In a fair balance, the horizons and geometries of Fernanda Valadares, constructed by the alchemy between pigments and beeswax, add unity not only by the coincidences in the palette of colours, but also by the organic demarcation which suggests more than clarifies, between forms and textures, between lyrical constructions of the landscape and the psyche.

To highlight the formal harmony that brings the two artists together does not mean to appease their distinctions: the work that closes the route - a dense and sullen encaustic by Valadares - acts as a climax, reverberating Elis' large canvas that imposes itself suspended: these works remind us that the word tone can still mean vigour, strength and tension.

Henrique Menezes

 Curator of the exhibition

SERVICE:

Mamute Gallery | Porto Alegre

Exhibition: The sound that silence hides

Artists: Camila Elis and Fernanda Valadares

Curator: Henrique Menezes

Opening: 21 May 2022, (Saturday) from 5pm to 7pm, with free public access.

Visiting until 30 June.