21st International Biennial of São Paulo

(João Cândido Galvão – Curator of the 21^st International Biennial of São Paulo)

Macbeth Mauser is located at the intersection of Visual Arts and Scenic Arts, a very rich region, but little explored among us, due to neglect, prejudice, and incompetence. The work of Adriano Guimarães, Fernando Guimarães, and Ricardo Junqueira raise all kinds of questions. In an academic plastic discussion, which divides a picture into figure and background, the theatrical setting could, also in academic terms, be the background for the figures of the actors. Macbeth Mauser reverses the situation, questions what the scenario is, isolates it from its theatrical reality, and based on its plastic content, gives it the condition of the subject of artistic discourse.

The installation can be seen as archeology of tragedy, using the expressive element left over after it happened. Clothes and objects are scattered on the earth, as if the place had been hastily abandoned, so much so that candles were left burning. We have the feeling of being present at the day alter of the documented situation. But, little by little, we see the work of Time in the oxidized iron, in the melted wax of candles. We begin to realize that we are traveling through a rich archaeological site and that yesterday can be historical and metaphorical, not temporal. The question that arises is: What is real? What will yesterday be? The one with the candles still burning or the one with the metal already corroded by rust, which works slowly?

Who would have been the inhabitants of this Pompeii without lava? What ambition would have driven the owners of sensual and barbaric costumes? Why would they have left behind their symbols of power? What desperation would have driven them to a hasty flight? Would the deteriorated images be those of these unknown inhabitants or would they represent figures from their past? All answers are possible, and this ambiguity enriches the installation’s atmosphere and leads us to another type of question, that of the time/space relationship, proposed by the work. The tragic situation suggested is compressed in the time of the visit and in the space of the installation. The many times and places that led to that limited situation, which we can only glimpse, are reduced to one, different from real time and space, but which creates a new reality – or a poetic unreality – that compacts the universal, that is felt, in particular, which is experienced by visitors.

At the end of the visit, stunned by the apocalyptic climate experienced, we perceive the biblical return to dust, which awaits everyone. And we understand the primitive religiosity that emanates from the place, a sacred space, of sacrifice.

After all, the gods of Art are pagans, and they know how to exact their blood tribute.