'ESQUEMAS PARA UNA ODA TROPICAL' A POEM/ A LANDSCAPE/ AN EXHIBITION/ AN INVESTIGATION BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AND FRIENDS IN RIO DE JANEIRO

'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical' an exhibition curated by Pablo Leon de la Barra in Rio de Janeiro


exhibition views, tropical research tables

exhibition views

Sophie Nys + Arto Lindsay, Lyrics for Arto Lindsay based on Roberto Burle Marx’s list of plants for Parque do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Silkscreen 171x 158, 2011
A soundtrack by Arto Lindsya for an upcoming film on Flamengo Park by Sophie Nys
Soundtrack composed by Arto Lindsay with guitar improvisation by Luis Filipe de Lima


Carlos Pellicer, photocopies of poems written after his trip to Brazil in 1922, as part of the Mexican representation to celebrate the centenary of Brazil's Independence and visiting Rio's World Fair

Carlos Pellicer, Suíte Brasileira, Poemas Aéreos, 1922

poem written by Pellicer describing Rio from the airplane, maybe one of the first Tropical Modernist works

Carlos Pellicer, Suíte Brasileira, Otros Poemas, 1922, dedicated to modernist poet Ronald de Carvalho, one of the organisers of the Semana da Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo in February 1922



Carlos Pellicer, Esquemas para una Oda Tropical, 1935

a poem about the jungles of the American continent, dedicated to Mexican poet Jorge Cuesta, co-funder of the group Los Contemporaneos

Jose Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 1925 about the appearance of the race of the future in the Amazons

Vasconcelos was Mexico's Minister of Eduacation at the time, mentor of Pellicer and responsible for Pellicer's trip to Rio de Janeiro

Other works and Documents on table:

Cibelle, Mao Intencional, Fantasia, Fantasia Tropical, objeto1, watercolours, 2011
In Cibelle's watercolours, the hand writes visual landscapes which becomes poems, the watercolours, could also be drawn by an airplane flying above Rio, they also somehow remind us of Burle Marx's garden drawings and of Flavio de Carvalho's paintings

Sophie Nys, Lyrics for Arto Lindsay based on Roberto Burle Marx’s list of plants for Parque do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, publication, 2011

Shelagh Wakely, images of installations done in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s

Alejandro Cesarco 

‘Why work?’, 2008
take away stack of photocopies
Contents page of an imaginary book compiling texts around ideas of labor and leisure, including essays and articles by Theodor Adorno, Paul Lafargue, Charles Fourier, Robert L. Stevenson, H.D. Thoreau, Vinicius de Moraes, Roland Barthes, Oscar Wilde, as well as an introduction and a case study by Cesarco

Alfredo Ceibal, Untitled (from the Utopias series), pencil drawing, 132x43cm, 2010-2011 

a landscape and architecture utopia, imagining how the indigenous civilisations of the Americas would have developed if they hadn't been conquered by thee Europeans.

  

Indirectly, it also seems to illustrate Vasconcelos text:
“The conquest of the Tropics will transform all aspects of life. Architecture will abandon the Gothic arch, the vault, and, in general, the roof, which answers to the need for shelter. The pyramid will again develop. Colonnades and perhaps spiral constructions will be raised in useless ostentation of beauty, because the new aesthetics will try to adapt itself to the endless curve of the spiral, which represents the freedom of desire and the triumph of Being in the conquest of infinity. The landscape, brimming with colors and rhythms, will communicate its wealth to the emotions. Reality will be like fantasy. The aesthetics of cloudiness and grays will be seen as the sickly art of the past. A refined and intense civilization will answer to the splendors of a Nature swollen with potency, habitually generous, and shining with clarity. The panorama of present day Rio de Janeiro, or Santos, with the city and the bay, can give us an idea of what the future emporium of the integral race that is to come will be like.”
“Universopolis will rise by the great river, and from there the preaching, the squadrons, and the airplanes propagandizing the good news will set forth. If the Amazon becomes English, the world metropolis would not be called Universopolis, but Anglotown, and the armies would come out of there to impose upon the other continents the harsh law of domination by the blond-haired Whites and the extinction of their dark rivals. On the other hand, if the fifth race takes Ownership of the axis of the future world, then airplanes and armies will travel all over the planet educating the people for their entry into wisdom. Life, founded on love, will come to be expressed in forms of beauty”.
Jose Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race, 1925

Gilda Mantilla e Raimond Chaves, Carbon Copy Jungle II , 15 modified carbon copy drawings, 2011
The drawings are part of their research done in the Amazonic Libraries of Iquitos,
"One fine day in the future
someone like us
will open these books and brochures,
these old magazines and newspapers,
and will try to understand
through the shadows and the lights,
through signs hard to decode,
what is all that coming from the past."

Julia Rometti e Victor Costales, Negros y rojos, y azules…, carbon copy drawings in black red and blue, and silver on gelatin photographic prints, 2012
The work is part of Rometti and Costales Ediciones del Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical research on the the relationship between tropical organic nature and social revolutions. In this case, three carbon copy drawings are presented as three different chapters of a non-existing book, each one on a different colour black, red and blue (after Silvio Rodriguez' song Playa Giron). The same image is presented, that of a Calatea Makoyana, a native plant found in Brazil's interior, the image which was found as a flyleaf in a Botanical book. The photographs appear as footnotes to the book, and are photographs of oil palms burned in Ecuador, and covers of second hand books found at a bookshop in Lima of Peruvian writer and political activist Jose Carlos Mariategui.

Daniel Steegmann, Kiti Ka’aeté, slide projector, laser cut steel slide, 2011
Ka’até is Tupi-Guarani word for the deep forest, which is far away from the territory of men: is the mythical place where gods and spirits live, where known paths are interrupted and that is not penetrated.
Kiti means cut with a sharp instrument, and thus by the hand of man, by technology.
As in a Hegelian interpretation, to the indigenous tribes of Brazil the Ka’aeté, the deep jungle, is also a place without history, where things are not formed and where animals can metamorphose.
Kiti Ka’aeté is the generic title of a series of works that derive their form of the cuts in an original collage, made in turn by following forms and patterns of Guaraní indians’ abstract arts.

Kiti Ka’aeté is also an abstraction of the light going through the trees in the deepest corners of the jungle

Shelagh Wakely
Ghosts of past pleasure and Ghost Leaves, gold thread in box, without date

Gold thread covering the now disappeared structures of fruits and leaves who now exist as ghosts.

Wakely, who died last year was influential in connecting the Brazilian and English art scenes, and was also responsible of awakening in me a desire for Brazil and introducing me to many artists and dear friends. The exhibition is dedicated to her, bringing some of her work to Brazil, is a way of having her ghost present in the exhibition and of bringing a bit of her back to Rio, a place that constantly inspired her work.

Thomas Glassford, Bananera, Plexiglass and copper, 2011

The work didn't arrive on time for the opening, as it was held by ridiculous Brazilian customs for more than two weeks. VERY UNPROFESSIONAL GALLERIST JULIANA CINTRA LEFT THE WORK TO DIE IN CUSTOMS.

A photo of the work was taped at the entrance of the space, waiting for the hanging sculpture to arrive.

Felipe Mujica, Cibernética e sociedade, 2012

two framed silkscreens on wall and process collages and working cut-outs on table. The image and title are taken from a book from the seventies found by the artist at a flea market in Rio de Janiero, and is part of a group of works under process in which the artists works with the organic and geometric designs on the covers of found books.

Rodrigo Matheus, Paisagem (Landscapes), 2011

Daniel Steegmann, Kiti Ka’aeté, slide projector, laser cut steel slide, 2011

Mariana Castillo Deball, Todo es igual, se suicida la brùjula (All is the same, the compass suicides), hanging sculpture made of papier machê and images, 2011
"I am interested in the work of Carlos Pellicer, as a poet but also as an intellectual who was engaged in music, visual arts, museography, archaeology and anthropology. The poem (“Esquemas para una oda tropical a cuatro voces, Segunda Intención” ) is an ode to the jungles of the Amriecas. I consider the poem as a piece with multiple perspectives and voices, it is not the poet describing nature, but becoming bird, plant, sunset, serpent, guanábana, sunshine, water, tongue, green, multitude." MCD

Irene Kopelman, The Levy's Flight, pencil drawings on paper, 2008
drawings of volcanic lava formations in Hawaii.
The Levy’s Flight took form after a research visit to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in October 2008. During her visit, Kopelman realized a series of drawings which attempt to trace back something of the landscape in an almost romantic attempt to comprehend it. This strategy recalls the travellers from past centuries in their attempt to represent, organize and bring back to their homeland discoveries made of far away territories.

Laercio Redondo, Blow up / A Casa de Vidro, photographs, 2008
Redondo's series of photos deals with memory and transformations of space over time, specifically in the iconic glass house built by Lina Bo Bardi in the outskirts of Brazil in 1951. The photographs form part of a group of works which also include a film done by the artist in 1998 in the interior of the house after the husband of Lina, Pietro, died. The focus of this series of photographs is on details and objects that have been blown-up from the original images of the house until they lose their sharpness. they act as a counterpoint to traditional architectural photos as the building itself is removed. the objects appear to be suspended in air. The images accentuate the objects that remain in the house during the period of restoration; remnants or artifacts of memories removed from their original context.
The glass house on pilots was constructed by Lina on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, as time passed the vegetation around it grew, the house becoming a laboratorium to observe the vegetation, a research capsule immersed in the forest, a glass box illuminating the surrounding landscape, an air aquarium inside where it's inhabitants lived.

Dominique Gonzalez Foerster , Tropics, Documents on table and photocopy on floor, 2011

Dominique Gonzalez –Foerster’s investigation on the future of books (“is it possible to expand this library, and if so, how can it be done in a completely different way?”) and the relationship between text, space and climate presented as research documents on table.

Cibelle, reading Carlos Pellicer's poem 'Esquemas Para Una Oda Tropical' during the opening


view of the opening crowd


Rio de Janeiro's cosmopolitan art society


artist Laercio Redondo and curator Pablo Leon de la Barra


Pablo Leon de la Barra, Arto Lindsay and Sophie Nys

exhibiton text (for porturguese version scroll down)

Esquemas para una Oda Tropical
An exhibition / a poem / a library / a landscape
with Alejandro Cesarco, Alfredo Ceibal, Cibelle, Daniel Steegman, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Felipe Mujica, Gilda Mantilla y Raimond Chaves, Irene Kopelman, Julia Rometti y Victor Costales, Laercio Redondo, Mariana Castillo Deball, Rodrigo Matheus, Shelagh Wakely, Sophie Nys + Arto Lindsay, Thomas Glassford
and a live reading during the opening of Carlos Pellicer’s poems by Cibelle

a proposal by Pablo Leon de la Barra
January-March 2012

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Shelagh Wakely 1932-2011

In 1922, poet Carlos Pellicer (born in the tropical state of Tabasco, Mexico in 1897) visited Rio de Janeiro as part of the Mexican representation for the World Fair celebrating the centenary of Independence of Brazil, happening that year. The Rio de Janeiro landscape impressed him so much that he wrote a series of poems, including one Aerial Poem describing Rio as seen from the airplane, one of the first tropical modernist poems. This poems were included in his 1924 publication ‘Piedra de Sacrificios, Poemario Iberoamericano’ where other poems of his travels through South America were published. The prologue of the book was written by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexican Minister of Education at the time and who had been responsible for Pellicer’s visit to Rio de Janeiro and his travels through the continent. Talking about Pellicer’s poems, Vasconcelos concluded: “Reading this verses I’ve thought in a new religion that I once dreamt of preaching: the religion of the landscape… the most beautiful places in the world, would then be the most loved nations, not the places where we were born and where our bones will end, but there where the divine presence is revealed in the most pure visions of enchantment, of magnificent visions.” The trip to Rio de Janeiro and his travels through the continent also inspired Vasconcelos in writing in 1925 his own travelogue and manifesto ‘La Raza Cosmica’, where he advocates the emergence of a new human race made of the mix of all the races coming from the Americas, and which will have its capital in the Amazons: “The conquest of the Tropics will transform all aspects of life. Architecture will abandon the Gothic arch, the vault, and, in general, the roof, which answers to the need for shelter. The pyramid will again develop. Colonnades and perhaps spiral constructions will be raised in useless ostentation of beauty, because the new aesthetics will try to adapt itself to the endless curve of the spiral, which represents the freedom of desire and the triumph of Being in the conquest of infinity. The landscape, brimming with colours and rhythms, will communicate its wealth to the emotions. Reality will be like fantasy. The aesthetics of cloudiness and greys will be seen as the sickly art of the past. A refined and intense civilization will answer to the splendours of a Nature swollen with potency, habitually generous, and shining with clarity. The panorama of present day Rio de Janeiro, or Santos, with the city and the bay, can give us an idea of what the future emporium of the integral race that is to come will be like... Universopolis will rise by the great river, and from there the preaching, the squadrons, and the airplanes propagandizing the good news will set forth. If the Amazon becomes English, the world metropolis would not be called Universopolis, but Anglotown, and the armies would come out of there to impose upon the other continents the harsh law of domination by the blond-haired whites and the extinction of their dark rivals. On the other hand, if the fifth race takes ownership of the axis of the future world, then airplanes and armies will travel all over the planet educating the people for their entry into wisdom. Life, founded on love, will come to be expressed in forms of beauty.”

Pellicer’s experience of Rio de Janeiro had an effect on his work and his conception of the world, in terms that he could now think the world “from the tropics”, and not as conceived from Paris, New York or Mexico City, as he would probably had done if he hadn’t done these travels. Amongst his many poems, Pellicer wrote one called ‘Esquemas para una Oda Tropical’ from which the title of this exhibition comes. Pellicer wrote two different versions of the poem, one in 1935 and the other 38 years later in 1973. As Mariana Castillo Deball, one of the artists in the exhibition (and which has been determinant in rethinking many of the topics here presented) says about Pellicer’s poem Esquemas para una oda tropical “I consider the poem as a piece with multiple perspectives and voices, it is not the poet describing nature, but becoming bird, plant, sunset, serpent, guanábana, sunshine, water, tongue, green, multitude.” In the same way that in Pellicer’s poem, the work of the artists in the exhibition becomes poems, songs, plants, leaves, fruits, sunsets, yellows, greens, publications, landscapes, utopias, and in doing so rethink ways of being, doing and seeing, from the tropics.

The exhibition also opens the question on how to make available, and preserve for future generations the knowledge and the aesthetics produced from the tropics. In the attempt to answer this questions, the exhibition is inspired by Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves’ research into the amazonic libraries of Iquitos in Peru and in the preservation of the images found there “In the jungle there is a city, in this city there is a library, and in that library is the jungle”…“One fine day in the future someone like us will open these books and brochures, these old magazines and newspapers, and will try to understand through the shadows and the lights, through signs hard to decode, what is all that coming from the past." This ideas have also been central in Dominique Gonzalez –Foerster’s investigation on the future of books (“is it possible to expand this library, and if so, how can it be done in a completely different way?”) and the relationship between text, space and climate as explored in her exhibition Chronotopes and Dioramas, at Dia Art Foundation/Hispanic Society of America in 2010, where selected publications related to the ocean, the desert and the tropics were preserved inside diorama landscapes.

"La oda tropical a cuatro voces
podrá llegar, palabra por palabra,
a beber en mis labios,
a amarrarse en mis brazos,
a golpear en mi pecho,
a sentarse en mis piernas,
a darme la salud hasta matarme
y a esparcirme en sí misma,
a que yo sea, a vuelta de palabras,
palmera y antílope,
ceiba y caimán, helecho y ave-lira,
tarántula y orquídea, zenzontle y anaconda.
Entonces seré un grito, un solo grito claro
que dirija en mi voz las propias voces
y alce de monte a monte
la voz del mar que arrastra las ciudades
¡oh trópico!
y el grito de la noche que alerta el horizonte."
fragment of Carlos Pellicer, Esquemas para una Oda Tropical, 1935

Pablo Leon de la Barra

*****

Em 1922 o poeta Carlos Pellicer (nascido no estado tropical de Tabasco, México em 1897) visitou o Rio de Janeiro como um dos representantes da Feira Mundial que celebrava o centenário da independência do Brasil, que acontecia naquele ano. A paisagem do Rio de Janeiro lhe impressionou tanto que ele escreveu uma série de poemas, incluindo um Poema Aéreo descrevendo o Rio como ele via do avião, um dos primeiros poemas tropicais modernistas. Esses poemas foram incluídos na sua publicação de 1924 “Piedra de Sacrifícios, Poemario Iberoamericano”, onde outros poemas de suas viagens pela América do Sul foram publicados. O prólogo do livro foi escrito por Jose Vasconcelos, então Ministro da Educação Mexicano e que também foi responsável pela visita de Pellicer ao Rio de Janeiro e viagens pelo continente. Falando sobre os poemas de Pellicer, Vasconcelos concluiu: “Lendo estes versos, pensei em uma nova religião que eu já sonhei em pregar: a religião da paisagem... os lugares mais lindos do mundo se tornariam então umas das mais amadas nações, e não os lugares onde nascemos e pra onde nossos ossos irão, mas há lá uma presença divina que é revelada nas mais puras visões de encantamento, de magnificentes de visões”.

A viagem ao Rio de Janeiro e suas viagens pelo continente também inspirou Vasconcelos a escrever em 1925 seu próprio diário de viagens e manifesto “La Raza Cósmica” onde ele defende o surgimento de uma nova raça humana feita de uma mistura de todas as raças vindas das Américas, e a qual teria sua capital nas terras da Amazônia: “A conquista dos Trópicos transformará todos os aspectos da vida. A arquitetura abandonará o arco Gótico, o vão, e, em geral, o telhado, que responde pela necessidade de abrigo. A pirâmide se desenvolverá novamente. Colunatas e talvez também construções espirais serão elevadas em uma desnecessária ostentação de beleza, porque a nova estética tentará se adaptar as curvas infindáveis dos espirais, que representa a liberdade de desejo e triunfo na conquista pela infinito. A paisagem, transbordando com cores e ritmos, comunicará sua riqueza às emoções. A realidade será como fantasia. A estética de nublado e cinza será vista como uma doentia arte do passado. Uma intensa e refinada civilização responderá ao esplendor da Natureza, cheia de potência, geralmente generosa e brilhando com clareza.  O panorama do Rio atual, ou Santos, com a cidade e baía, pode nos dar uma idéia do que será o futuro empório de uma raça inteira. Universópolis se levantará ao lado do grande rio, e de lá a pregação, os esquadrões e os aviões propagando as boas novas partirá. Se a Amazônia se tornar inglesa, a metrópole mundial não seria chamada de Universópolis mas sim de Anglotown, e os exércitos sairiam de lá para impor a outros continentes um a lei estrita de dominação por brancos/loiros e também a extinção dos inimigos de pele escura. Por outro lada, se a quinta raça dominasse o eixo do mundo futuro então os aviões e exércitos viajaram pelo mundo educando as pessoas para sua própria sabedoria. Vida, fundada em amor, virá a ser expressa através da beleza”.

A experiência de Pellicer no Rio de Janeiro teve efeito no seu trabalho e na sua concepção do mundo, em termos que agora ele poderia pensar o mundo “a partir dos trópicos”, e não como concebido por Paris, Nova Iorque ou Cidade do México, como ele teria provavelmente feito se ele não tivesse realizado essas viagens. Dentre seus muitos poemas Pellicer escreveu um chamado “Esquemas para una Oda Tropical” do qual o nome desta exposição foi tirado. Pellicer escreveu duas versões diferentes deste poema, um em 1935 e o outro 38 anos depois, em 1973. Como Mariana Castillo Deball, uma artista nesta exposição (e que tem sido determinante para repensar muitos dos tópicos aqui presentes), disse sobre o poema Esquemas para una oda tropical de Pellicer “considero o poema como uma peça de muitas perspectivas e vozes, não é o poeta descrevendo a natureza, mas se transformando em um pássaro, planta, pôr-do-sol, serpente, graviola, raios de sol, água, língua, verde, multidão”. Da mesma forma que nos poemas de Pellicer, o trabalho de artistas nas exposições se tornam poemas, músicas, plantas, folhas, frutas, pores-do-sol, amarelos, verdes, publicações, paisagens, utopias, e fazendo assim repensa jeitos de ser, fazer e ver dos trópicos.

A exposição também abre a questão em como se disponibilizar, e preservar o conhecimento e estética vinda dos trópicos para futuras gerações. Na tentativa de responder a estas questões a exposição é inspirada pela investigação de Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster no futuro dos livros (“é possível expandir essa biblioteca, e se for, como pode ser feito de uma maneira totalmente diferente”?) e na relação entre texto, espaço e clima que é explorado no seu trabalho. A exposição é também inspirada na pesquisa de Gilda Mantilla e Raimond Chaves das bibliotecas Amazônicas de Iquitos no Peru e na preservação de conhecimento e imagens encontrados lá “Na selva há uma cidade, nesta cidade há uma biblioteca e nesta biblioteca há uma selva”... “um belo dia no futuro alguém como nós vai abrir esses livros e brochuras, estas revistas e jornais antigos, e vai tentar entender através das sombras e luzes, sinais difíceis de decodificar, o que é tudo isto vindo do passado”. 

Pablo Leon de la Barra