If you and I had a bit of foresight, we would have gotten our yellow fever inoculation about 8 weeks ago. That way we could happily travel to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to attend this week’s most intriguing art fair: SP-Arte/2018. It started yesterday and lasts for 4 days, but the satellite shows in the local galleries, museums and collections are up for several months. Galleries, museums and cultural centers in São Paulo feature a wide variety of events including exhibition openings, institutional collection visits, panel discussions, book launches, performances and guided tours fostering a unique art immersion week.

It’s become one of these it occasions, where the rich, the famous, the wannabes and the hanger-ons all congregate, not to mention the dealers, the connoisseurs, the investors and the art students. (Yes, I am jealous that I can’t be there. And no, I’m not going to reveal into which of the above categories I might fall.)

SP-Arte is known for showing Latin-american artists that have otherwise little exposure, in addition to the many already famous. The two shows I’d be certain to catch are one by Franz Manata and Saulo Laudares, ‘After Nature’ and Paulo Nimer Pjota’s ‘Medley’. You’ll easily discern why these two are of interest to me.

Pjota first: He used to be a graffiti artist and has turned into an installation artist with a focus on painting. His work is full of socio-political commentary, he uses found or recycled objects to interact with his paintings, and he has a sense of humor that appeals to me.

http://paulopjota.com

He’s also not above milking the it crowd for their money; you can buy a small volume of photographs together with an XL tshirt and some decals representing his paintings for a mere 150 Euros…. between philosophy and crime, indeed. Making me smile.

Manata and Laudares, my second choice, will have a 20 year retrospective at the fair. They are true multimedia artists, who have an affinity for works including sounds, but add to that everything imaginable in the realm of installations. In 2008 in a work called After Nature they placed speakers in the trees of Brazilian parks which had been invaded by parakeets who drove out the indigenous population of song birds. The speakers played the songs of the latter, much to the pleasure of people visiting the parks – until they discovered that these were artificial sounds….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qVCdWbiWY0

Graffiti, birds, art, travel – why am I not in Sao Paulo as we speak????

Photomontages are my own after nature versions…. from an older series called Feux Follets.