Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 1971/2022
Hélio Oiticica
Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 1971/2022
About
May 14 – August 14, 2022
Opening Hours: Tuesday-Thursday 11 am – 5 pm, Friday 11:00am – 7:30pm, Saturday 11 am – 5 pm, Sunday 11 am – 5 pm
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Hélio Oiticica
Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 1971 / 2022
Wooden and steel structure, wire mesh, curtains, plants, and video projections , 2022
Diameter: 40.35 feet (12.30 meters) Height: 9.84 feet (3 meters)
Courtesy of the Estate of Hélio Oiticica and Lisson Gallery
Presented in collaboration with Projeto Hélio Oiticica and Americas Society, this immersive environment is the first realization of a never-before-executed idea by the late Brazilian artist. Oiticica envisioned the work in 1971, as part of a series of Subterranean Tropicália Projects for Central Park, while he was living in New York City, drawing inspiration from the thriving underground culture. The circular structure of curving corridors provides visitors with a sensory multi-sensory experience and a space for the public to collectively engage in auto-performance. The 40 feet diameter environment, with plants and image projections, creates a play of light, shadow, opacity, framing, and orientation. It is a space for collective creativity and leisure, dubbed “creleisure” by the artist.
Over the course of the exhibition, Brazilian and Queer artists will activate the installation as a stage for interactive performances and workshops, , in addition to programs with La Luna and Bell Falleiros. During Socrates’ summer monthly New Agora series, the Parks’ community partners – including Fortune Society, and Jazz Foundation of America, among others – will activate PN15, echoing Oiticica’s engagement with the public.
The project is presented in conjunction with the exhibition https://www.as-coa.org/exhibitions/must-be-place-latin-american-artists-new-york-1965-1975‘This Must Be the Place: Latin America Artists in New York, 1965-1975′ at https://www.as-coa.orgAmericas Society .
Image credit:
Katherine Abbott Photography, KMDECO Creative Solutions. ‘Maquette for Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 Penetrable,’ 1971. Nylon mesh and cardboard. Photographer Miguel Rio Branco, © César and Claudio Oiticica
Video by: KMDeco Creative Solutions: Mark DiConzo. Video created with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Courtesy Socrates Sculpture Park, 2022.
Video Program #1: Hélio’s New York Underground
May 14 – May 29
Hélio Oiticica, Agrippina is Rome – Manhattan, 1972, 15 mins, super 8 transferred to digital, color, sound
This unfinished film, featuring Cristiny Nazareth, Antonio Dias, and Mario Montez, may be considered Oiticica’s meditation on New York City. Oiticica’s notes tell us the film is partly inspired by Wall Street Inferno, a poem by nineteenth century Brazilian poet Joaquim de Sousa Andrade who lived in New York during the Gilded Age. The titular reference to the Roman Empress, mother of the notorious Nero, who was widely regarded as deceitful and merciless in pursuit of power, transposes the decline-of-the-empire narrative from Rome to Manhattan. Reenforcing this parallel are shots of the characters stoically wandering through Wall Street’s neoclassical architecture, which pan up towards the mammoth buildings in a vertiginous circular motion. Drag star, Mario Montez monotonously, repetitively plays dice with Antonio Dias on top of a heap of rusty metal sheets. What luck to find in the streets a craps-worthy surface marked with an “M” for Mario Montez. Speedy and unceasing the menacing traffic whizzes past. These scenes seem to suggest that New York fame, wealth, and life is very much up to chance.
Image credit: Hélio Oiticica, Agrippina is Rome – Manhattan, 1972. © César and Claudio Oiticica
Video Program #2: Projections Among Friends
June 4 – June 26
Curated by Americas Society
Created by Latin American artists also living in New York in the period, the selected videos in this program reflect the artists embrace of video as experimental media in their practices while also revealing networks of affinity and friendship based on video production. For instance, Andreas Valentin’s video All Language (1974) features Oiticica himself in midst of work in the bureaucracy of a translation company. Regina Vater’s LuxoLixo(1973/74) a reflection on waste and excess she saw in the city of New York, was a collaboration with Oiticica, who composed the work’s soundtrack. Gerchman’s Triunfo Hermético (1972) touches upon key issues that both Oiticica and Gerchman were concerned, such as language and identity categorizations, as well as the merging of art and life. Eduardo Costa’s Name of Friends (1969) also centered on language and friendship, present information that can only be fully understood by a viewer able to read lips. Finally, Leandro Katz’s Notas Lunares (1980), a reflection on the human and the cosmic world, highlights phases of the moon, which appears and disappears unconcerned by human’s desires.
Andreas Valentin, All Language, 1974, 3:31 mins, Super 8 transferred to digital, Courtesy of the Artist
Rubens Gerchman, Triunfo Hermético, 1972, 12 mins, 35 mm transfer to digital, color, no sound
Antonio Dias, The Illustration of Art, 1971, 2:25 mins, 2:25 mins, Courtesy of the Galeria Nara Roesler
Eduardo Costa, Name of Friends, 1969, 2:44 mins, 8 mm film transferred to digital, Courtesy Eduardo Costa Studio
Leandro Katz, Notas Lunares, 1980, 10 mins, 16 mm transferred to digital, color, no sound, Courtesy of the artist, of Henrique Faria Fine Art, and of Herlitzka+Faria
Regina Vater, LuxoLixo, 1973/74, 16:13 mins, Digital video, Courtesy of the Artist and Galeria Jaqueline Martins
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Video Program #3: Hélio’s Legacies
July 1-August 14
https://socratessculpturepark.org/artist/helio-oiticica/Hélio Oiticica (1937 – 1980) is widely regarded as one of Brazil’s leading artists of the twentieth century and a touchstone for much contemporary art made since the 1960s, primarily through his freewheeling, participatory works of art, performative environments, avant-garde films and abstract paintings. Even before the age of 20, Oiticica was a key member of the historic Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente (1954-56), his radical play with geometric form and vibrant colors transcending the minimal lines of European constructivism and imbuing his work with an exuberant rhythm that resonated with the avant-garde music and poetry of his native Brazil. In the late 1950s, Oiticica would go on to become a leading figure of Brazilian Neo-Concretism (1959-61) that included other ground breaking artists such as Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and the poet Ferreira Gullar, ultimately giving rise to the artistic movement known as Tropicalismo, named for a work of Oiticica’s from 1967.
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