{"id":901,"date":"2010-11-06T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-06T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=901"},"modified":"2010-11-06T12:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-06T12:11:00","slug":"mc-ldn-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=901","title":{"rendered":"MC LDN #7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maria do Carmo Pontes, a correspondente avan\u00e7ada do b\u00aeog em Londres (com foto e micro-perfil a\u00ed na barra lateral), mandou a s\u00e9tima coluna MC LDN. L\u00e1 vai:<\/b><\/span>

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The artist as a curator<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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Seven Headed Monster, by Erika Verzutti, in collaboration with Efrain Almeida, Carlos Bevilacqua + Ernesto Neto, Alexandre da Cunha, Jac Leirner, Dami\u00e1n Ortega, Nuno Ramos and Adriana Varej\u00e3o.<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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no Galp\u00e3o Fortes Vila\u00e7a, S\u00e3o Paulo    –   19.09.2010 | 18.12.2010<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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In 2007, Brazilian artist, Erika Verzutti, created a sculpture called \u201cSeven Headed Monster\u201d, for her homonymous exhibition at the extinct gallery Blow de la Barra, in London. It consisted on a cold porcelain structure from where seven necks of the same material hanged unfamiliar fruits and vegetables made of bronze, forming a 1.6 m tall sculpture. Three years later, Verzutti decided to curate her own work and invited other artists (whom she admired, rather than had affinity) to each conceive a head for her monster, now presented in even larger dimensions. The only condition was that, as a garden artwork, the heads had to be resistant to weather adversities.<\/p>\n

Some of them took the challenge as an opportunity to do a sculpture without any direct connexion to the rest of their practices, taking the collective character of the work as a chance to experiment different materials and forms, or maybe to establish a mimesis relation with Verzutti\u2019s visual identity, attempting to fulfill her expectations. Such was the case of Efrain Almeida\u2019s piece – whose beautiful own sculptures often presents wood animals – who developed a long-neck swan made of plaster and enamel; or Ortega\u2019s head, a formless block made of bread dough which the public was welcome to deform and reform, drawing new shapes.<\/p>\n

Other artists printed their marks with a taste of their solo works, not necessarily taking the literality of a head-shape instruction to their designated necks: Alexandre da Cunha and Adriana Varej\u00e3o responded like that, da Cunha presenting a yellow concrete mixer and Varej\u00e3o with a cube made of light blue tiles with disconnected eyes. Nuno Ramos made a loudspeaker where a half-drunk man recites a text of his authorship; Ernesto Neto and Carlos Bevilacqua, in another collaboration, thought of a little wood sphere with a white feather on the top – from an albino peacock, they say. Jac Leirner\u2019s contribution was what she believed to be an outdoors work: the head of a classic marble sculpture depicting a woman with a bird\u2019s hat from her own private garden. To this part was added a body of a pregnant woman, an intervention by Erika Verzutti. Besides making the structure and concept of the piece, she also conceived a head of her own: a bronze jackfruit which provided an eighth part to the Seven Headed Monster.<\/p>\n

Beyond the specificities and carefully constructed aspects of the individual heads, what is impressive about the piece is the power of the collection. None of the artists knew what the others were going to conceive, or even who they were going to be. Even the monster\u2019s mother didn\u2019t knew how it would look like until the moment that all the pieces were installed. The sculpture has a narrative, resembles a gouache, it is performative, a collage, tests the limits of collaboration as well as attempts a universal art. It is a \u201cultimate fight\u201d, gathering in itself relevant issues of an exhibition, being the most important of them the ability to negotiate. Certainly not beautiful, but strange, and extremely attractive.<\/p>\n