Carpintaria is pleased to present Rebote [Rebound], an exhibition that proposes an encounter between Marina Rheingantz’s paintings and Mauro Restiffe’s analog photographs. The works revolve around interests shared by both artists, such as the landscape genre and painting itself. Convergences and contrasts are revealed through a narrative path. Excerpts from recent series by Restiffe, such as the one developed at the villa Santo Sospir (2018), alternate between the color and black&white registers. Rheingantz, on the other hand, shows small and large format oil paintings alongside a set of embroideries, which represent a textile embodiment of her pictorial vocabulary. Moreover, the duo relies on the collaboration of curator Rodrigo Moura, who also wrote a curatorial essay. The exhibit is in line with Carpintaria’s experimental program that continues to promote dialogues between creators, languages and forms of expression.

Rebound: Three-Way Correspondences 

Rodrigo Moura

Father: Which red things do you know?

Daughter: Yellow.

There are at least three ways to make an exhibition.

…as travel memories pile up, souvenirs compete for hidden corners in the house (in the box, on the shelf, in the mind, at the gallery). The egg-shell ceramic bowl bought in a flea market of an european capital and brought in the bottom of the suitcase, wrapped on a white t-shirt stolen from a boyfriend, holds basalt pebbles collected at an artist residence street in China; next to it, a crisp volcanic rock, memento of a 1,76 mile high still-active volcano, at Fogo, Cape Verde…

Rebound refers to the challenge of establishing three-way dialogues and matches, bringing painting, photography, writing and curating practices closer. The starting points are the artworks themselves as well as previous collaborative experiences between the actors. No rules are established at first, but associations are built along the way. Approximations may be formal, matching formally equal pieces, or also embody broader aspects. The entropic mode of Marina Rheingantz’ painting is the kick-start, the touchstone of established relationships. A landscape painting that is constantly on the verge of melting, transforming into pure inanimate matter something that already wishes to be figure – any figure – even before being a form. Rainfall looking like an elephant. An umbrella of meanings. The images taken from Mauro Restiffe’s archives are proof of the time and space flexibility that outlines his practice. Time frames change order, placement and timing particularities cross-examine each other in a kind of mirror maze, not surprisingly one of his tropes. Critical creative writing is a counterpoint to the images, a voice intoned in conjunction with the main subjects. A writing that is disenchanted in time, like the fragments that comprise and interrupt the main narrative of this text, which are inherent to it, going back to the relations between the front and the back of embroideries and between light and shadow in photography. Handwriting, artisanal, residual, letters and words’ sawdust. A scripted afterthought.

…this thought came clearly to me after the exhibition at the Library, when there was no room to talk about technique and everybody was too distracted by ideas about affection and intimacy in photography and other generalities. The mental picture I’ve used as antidote to this trend was of a vision that would transfer the photographic apparatus attributes straight to human sight. Seeing the world through photography, choosing the film exposure, summing it all up to the vertical and horizontal lines of the frame. In a dream I had around the same time, I’d visit a mountainous landscape on the road to Ouro Preto and I’d see it all in black&white, in slightly enhanced contrast and just a single colored spot among the rocks and the savanna flora. A wooden cabin selling film, pure Kodak yellow light…

Rebound is about the reactive effects from the touch of bodies against each other, “bounce or backlash of an elastic body as it hits another”. Juxtaposing Restiffe’s photos with Rheingantz’ paintings implies highlighting some proximities. These are expressed here through the sense of placement and the scenery, and also through the interest for airborne light. Reactive effects are inevitable in the material difference of the paintings, embroideries and photographs. The photographic element is more concealed in Marina’s paintings than the opposite. There’s no precise match, but rather echoes.

Affinity outbreaks, for instance, on Jean Cocteau’s drawings at the villa Santo Sospir and the embroidery threads from Uma passadinha (2018); on the late-evening confetti and the grainy brushstrokes; on vertical and horizontal mountains; on blinding back-lights; on Lorenzato’s paintings hanging on the walls of Ricardo Homen’s studio and the line of smaller works hanging at Carpintaria; on the jockey club portrayed in Italy and the other one right over there; on the image in shards from Minas Gerais: Brumadinho’s resonance on the mud matter of Rheingantz paintings, baroque nostalgia on Restiffe’s Congonhas, a picture on this text’s wall.

…time has passed. “Someday, when” is not feasible – this landscape will pop in your eyes. New or old, what does it matter? It’s the exhibit – and it will be on this very day – of a strange vivid sky, by a novelist whose only love was living – passing – which is everybody’s passion...*

Rodrigo Moura is a curator, writer and editor. He’s the author of Marina Rheingantz – Terra líquida (Cobogó, 2016), has been the curator of the exhibition Mauro Restiffe – Álbum (Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2017) and has collaborated in this show at the invitation of the artists.

About the artists

Marina Rheingantz (Araraquara, 1983) lives and works in São Paulo. Recent solo shows include Várzea, Bortolami Gallery (New York, 2018); Galope, Zeno X Gallery (Antwerp, 2017); Terra Líquida, Galeria Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo, 2016); and Dot Line Line Dot, Nichido Contemporary Art (Tokyo, 2016). Notable group shows include On Landscapes – Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle, Belgium, 2018); Mínimo, múltiplo, comum, Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2018); Projeto Piauí, Pivô (São Paulo, 2016); Soft Power, Kunsthal KAdE (Amersfoort, Netherlands, 2016); Prêmio PIPA, MAM Rio (Rio de Janeiro, 2015). Her work is present in the following collections: Museu Serralves (Porto), Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, MAM Rio (Rio de Janeiro), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), among others. Rheingantz will have a solo show at Galpão Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, in São Paulo, in June 2019.

Mauro Restiffe (São José do Rio Pardo, 1970) lives and works in São Paulo. Recent solo shows include: São Paulo, Fora de Alcance, Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo, 2018 – Rio de Janeiro, 2014); Álbum, Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2017); Post-Soviet Russia 1995/2015, Garage Museum (Moscow, 2016); and Obra, MAC-USP (São Paulo, 2013). Restiffe participated in major group show such as: Gwangju Biennial (2018), Aichi Triennial (Nagoya, Japan, 2016); Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador, 2014); São Paulo Biennial (2006); and Panorama de Arte Brasileira (São Paulo, 2013 and 2005). His work is part of the following collections: MoMA (New York), Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York), SFMOMA (San Francisco), Tate Modern (London), Inhotim (Brumadinho), Instituto Moreira Salles (Rio de Janeiro), MASP (São Paulo), MAC-USP (São Paulo), MAM (São Paulo), Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo), among others. In November 2019, Restiffe will have a solo show at OGR Torino, in Italy.

* Excerpt from a dedication by writer Lúcio Cardoso on a drawing from 1950.