DON'T BE TROPICAL, DON'T BE A HERO: 'TRISTES TROPIQUES' AT THE BARBER SHOP IN LISBON

The Barber Shop, exterior


Donald Urquhart, ‘Carmen Miranda’ poster, 2010



photograph of Claude Levi-Strauss in the tropics
“Such is how I view myself: a traveller, an archaeologist of space, trying in vain to restore the exotic with the use of particles and fragments”.




Tristes Tropiques exhibition publication, designed by Ana Baliza


exhibition layout plan


exhibiton views (Jean Michel Wicker's 'Pensée Sauvage')


exhibiton views (Runo Lagomarsino's 'Cobogos' and Jean Michel Wicker's 'Pensée Sauvage')


exhibiton views (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's 'SET' photographs and Runo Lagomarsino's 'Cobogo' sculptures)



exhibition views



Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, untitled (SET-janeiro 2010), 2010 printed photographs



Jean-Michel Wicker ‘Ex-Voto-Tto’, 2010 ( two shells, three bits of corals, dental strings, nails, a smile)



Runo Lagormarsino, ‘Cobogos’, 2009, cardboard sculptures on shelf









Jean-Michel Wicker,‘Pocket Posters’, 2010 (various inserts, notes and xeroxes from forthcoming fanzine on Lina Bo Bardi), Le Edizioni Della China, Berlin


tropical wall and mirror at the barber shop


Arto Lindsay, ‘The 1958 Song’, Bossa Nova written for DGF
composed and performed by Arto Lindsay (voice) and Alexandre Kassin (guitar), published+copyright 2009 by Firma Ltd and Esponja Producões






Helio Oiticica,‘Boys & Men’, 1970s, script for an unrealized film to be filmed in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro



Flavio de Carvalho,‘New Look’, 1956, drawing



Patrizio Di Massimo, ‘Ten Little Nigers’, 2009, selection from a series of ink drawings, 29.7 x 21 cm


Elein Fleiss, ‘Jornal do Inverno’, 2010, A4 publication in black&white, printed on recycled paper, edition of 200


Walter Gam, 'Ambiente', book of poems, 2009


Walter Gam's poems and reading stool


Carla Zaccagnini and Mauricio Lupini's videos


Carla Zaccagnini, Duas Margens, (Atlantico), 2003
Video by Sofia Ponte recorded at Praia da Calada, Portugal, on December 5th, 2003, from 4:00 to 5:00 PM; video by Wagner Morales recorded at Praia do Iporanga, Brazil, on December 5th, 2003, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
Duas Margens (Brazil) will be shown at the Barber Shop, Lisbon while Duas Margens (Portugal) will be shown at the same time in Capacete, Rio de Janeiro.


Mauricio Lupini, ‘Read after Reading (BimBom, DibuDuDa, Bada Didi)’, 2006
music videos


Pablo Helguera, ‘He says he is curating a biennial and he wants to know if anyone here does video’, 2009, cartoon


exhibition view


Alexandre da Cunha,‘Nao seja marginal, nao seja heroi’ (after Helio Oiticica), 2009



friendly tropical ferns hanging from the ceiling


The Barber Shop, Lisboa and Novo Museo Tropical present:

Tristes Tropiques
A proposal by Pablo Leon de la Barra
A gran saudade colletiva with works by Alexandre da Cunha, Patrizio Di Massimo, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pablo Helguera, Runo Lagomarsino, Mauricio Lupini, Donald Urquhart, Jean-Michel Wicker, Carla Zaccagnini, a journal by Elein Fleiss, poems by Walter Gam, soundtrack by Arto Lindsay, and documents from the Flavio de Carvalho and Helio Oiticica Archives.
With the support of Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas
Special thanks to Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Julieta Gonzalez and Adriano Pedrosa.
The Barber Shop, Rua Rosa Araújo 5, Lisboa
March 4, 2010, 10PM
http://thisisthebarbershop.blogspot.com/

In memory of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)

Biographies:

Alexandre da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1969, he lives and works in London. Da Cunha’s work plays with everyday utilitarian objects using and re-using objects and stripping them of their original use value and combining them to create new structures. The artist has constructed new works from domestic objects such as furniture, mops, walking sticks, household objects, pots, planters and concrete. Recently he had a solo exhibition at Camden Arts Centre. He has exhibited in numerous group shows including: ‘Ordinary Revolutions’, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, 2009; ‘An Unruly History of the Readymade’, Jumex Collection, Mexico, 2008; ‘Passengers’, Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2008; and the 50th Venice Biennale, ‘The Structure of Survival’, Venice, 2003.

Flávio de Rezende Carvalho (1899-1973) was a Brazilian architect and artist. Carvalho was educated in France from 1911 to 1914, and then in Newcastle until 1922. In Newcastle he obtained degrees in both civil engineering and fine art. Carvalho returned to Sao Paulo in 1922, joining a local construction firm, before designing his own buildings and creating numerous artworks. As an artist Carvalho represented Brazil at the 1950 Venice Biennial. Carvalho was noted for his experimental designs, such as his House at Capuava Ranch. Carvalho frequently continuously created controversy in his time, walking in the opposite direction to a Corpus Christi parade in Sao Paolo. During a warm summer day of 1956, de Carvalho walked from home to his work place wearing a self made unisex suit to which he gave the name of ‘New Look: summer fashion for a New Man’

Patrizio Di Massimo was born in Italy in 1983 and he lives and works in Amsterdam. When young, he traveled to China, Russia and Libya, trips which were fundamental for his education. His work concentrates on removing the historical nature of specific contexts and situations, trying to articulate everything in the present where only mythology finds a place. He uses irony to shift the perspective towards things, in an attempt to separate reality and truth. Di Massimo exhibited recently at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2009; Galleria d’Arte moderna e contemporanea, Bergamo, 2009; and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, 2009.

Elein Fleiss was born in April 1968 in Paris. Since 1989 she organizes exhibitions. From 1992 she published ‘Purple Magazine’ with Olivier Zahm and in 2003 the quarterly ‘Hélène’, followed in 2004 by ‘The Purple Journal’. She now publishes ‘Les Cahiers Purple’ once a year. In 1998 she started doing her own photographic work. She directed and co-directed three super 8 short films, ‘Denise’ in 2001, ‘Lui’ in 2003 and ‘Kumiko’ in 2004. She lives in Lisbon.

Walter Gam is an artist and poet. He was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1983.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in 1965 in Strasbourg, France. Among her recent solo exhibitions are projects for The Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, 2008; MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, 2008; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, Paris, 2007; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, 2004; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2002. She also participated in Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2007 and Documenta XI, Kassel, 2002. Gonzalez-Foerster lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

Pablo Helguera was born in Mexico City, 1971. He is a visual artist living in New York. He made cartoons when he was 12 but then decided that it was not a serious art profession. Today, devoid of any hope for seriousness, and tired of the absolute lack of humour that exists in the art world, Helguera briefly went back to his roots. He has published 10 books including ‘The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style’, ‘Artoons’ and ‘Theatrum Anatomicum (and other Performance Lectures)’.

Runo Lagomarsino was born in 1977, lives and works in Malmö. Lagomarsino participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York in 2007–08, the IASPIS residency at Platform Garanti, Istanbul in 2006, and the Capacete Residency in Rio de Janeiro, 2009. Lagomarsino exhibited in The 7th Gwangju Biennale, Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, Gwangju, 2008. Recent Exhibitions in 2009 include: ‘Report on Probability’ Kunsthalle Basel; ‘Read Thread’ Tanas, Berlin; ‘Free as Air and Water’, Cooper Union, New York; ‘Panorama da Arte Brasiliero’ Museu De Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo; ‘Changing Light Bulbs In Thin Air’ Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York.

Arto Lindsay was born in 1953, Richmond, Virginia, he lives and works in Brazil. Lindsay is a guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He spent his young years in Brazil with his missionary parents and came of age during the Tropicália movement which made an enduring impact on him. In the late 1970s, he co-formed the seminal no wave group DNA. In the early 1990s Lindsay began to rarefy his singing voice and launched a solo career, significantly more oriented toward his Brazilian roots.

Mauricio Lupini lives and works in Rome, he was born in Caracas in 1963. Lupini’s work dismantles the myths of Western modernity via the use of ethnographic methodology. He has participated among other exhibitions in ‘Panorama da Arte Brasiliero’, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2009; ‘Trienal Poligrafica de San Juan’, Puerto Rico, 2009; ‘Tropical Abstraction’, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, 2005; ‘Etnografia: Modo de Empleo’, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. He is currently preparing an exhibition of new works at Periferico, Caracas.

Helio Oiticica was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, he died in Rio in 1980. He was the son of an entomologist who was also a photographer & painter, & the grandson of a philologist & anarchist leader. Oiticica became known in the late 50s and 60s for his colour and spatial works, as well as installation and performance works such as the ‘Penetrables’ and ‘Parangolés’. After moving to New York in 1971, he began incorporating elements from film and theatre to create the environments that he would dub ‘Quasi-Cinemas’. An artist and thinker, he positioned himself between the avant-garde, Brazilian popular culture, and the realities of ‘underdevelopment’ & 'sixties radicalism’, he came to reflect deeply on the issues concerning art, invention, and freedom.

Donald Urquhart was born in 1963 in Dumfries, Scotland. He is a writer, performer and artist. He moved to London in 1984, and established a friendships and collaborative role with Leigh Bowery and embraced the heady drag-performance scene of which Bowery and his circle were pioneering innovators. Urquhart set up the underground club night ‘The Beautiful Bend’, which he ran throughout the 1990s with Sheila Tequila and DJ Harvey; the artwork for the flyers, illustrated booklets, and posters for the club resulted in a number of exhibitions of his darkly humorous pen and ink drawings. Since then he has been exhibiting his drawings of the divas of his obsession. He currently runs a gay bingo night at the King Edward VII pub in London.

Jean-Michel Wicker was born in 1970 in France. He is an artist and a publisher. From 2001 to 2009 he lived in Nice where he was responsible for the ‘Casa Jungle Garden’ and where in 2006, he founded ‘Le Edizioni Della Luna’, now ‘Le Edizioni Della China’. He currently lives in Berlin.

Carla Zaccagnini lives in São Paulo, was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. Zaccagnini is a visual artist, critic and curator. She was the director of the Programming and Curatorial Department of the Centro Cultural São Paulo. She is a member of the editorial board of ‘Número’ magazine. Her work was recently featured at the 28 Bienal de São Paulo. Among her solo shows the most recent are "No. It is Opposition’, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, 2008 and ‘Bifurcações e encruzilhadas’, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, 2008.