Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present the exhibition passa tempo [killing time], by Valeska Soares, at the Galpão, featuring new sculptures and installations that deal with the relation between memory, feeling, and the perception of time.
The artwork Vertigo is constructed of dozens of cake stands made of glass, porcelain, mirror and silver, balanced atop one another and grouped according to affinities of color and material, or by opposition of style. Columns with heights up to 1.45 meters arranged directly on the floor allude to Brancusi’s infinite columns. Like architectural structures, the cake stands are transformed by Soares into “towers” that seem ready to crumble at any moment. Viewers feel as though they were walking through a minefield, experiencing a sensation of danger and vertigo.
The concept of fragility is also present in the collage of the series Sugar Blues, in which Soares uses wrappers from candy she and her friends have eaten in daily life. Exaggerated consumption can be seen as a kind of pastime. With geometric outlines, the three-dimensional collage with a constructivist verve is hung on the wall. The artist appropriates these objects, “reinventing their histories.”
In Horizontes, dozens of wooden boxes – cigar boxes and boxes for makeup or sewing supplies, collected by Soares over the years – form a 12-meter-long horizon line at eye level on the wall. The artist explores the semantic content of the boxes as a sign of memory and time. The little inlaid boxes present typical Brazilian scenes like a coconut tree on a beach or an araucaria pine on a mountain. The drawings come together at key points: a mountain on one box is linked with a lake on another, a river on one flows into the sea on another, forming a single image.
The installation Entanglement, formed by two empty glass chairs joined by various footstools (dating from 1800 to 1980) constructs a colorful collage, a web of textures and historical elements. As an entanglement of memory and life, this artwork sublimely manifests the idea of absence, of the inexorable passage of time. Entanglement confirms that Valeska Soares appropriates the history that each object bears, more than the object itself.
The artist has resided in New York since 1992. She has participated in various international art biennials: São Paulo (2008), Sharjah (2009), Istanbul and Taipei (2006), as well as the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). In October 2009 her installation Follies, previously shown at the Venice Biennale, will open in an individual pavilion at Inhotim Contemporary Art Center in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais.
