Tunga at Luhring Augustine - New York - Brief Article

In this exhibition, Rio-based artist Tunga at handed four recent large-scale sculptures, plus a performance piece titled Make-Up Coincidence upon the show's opening day. sum of two units of the sculptures, Triade Trinade and posterity of the Baby, served as places and props in the two-hour-plus performance upon Jan. 26, which featured three female and three male performers. The artist described the fact as a chamber version of an elaborate action at handed earlier in the year in Paris, and in the fall in Sao Paulo, which included a certain number of 200 performers.

Of the works exclud from the performance, La Belle et La Bete was situated near the gallery entrance. It features sum of two units bulbous shapes the size of medicine balls, made of highly polished cent Small hollows and protruding nodules like rudimentary sex organs activate the surfaces. Raised several feet from the floor, each orb is nestl in the crux of a tripod made of lengthy copper and bronze rods. sum of two units of these poles end in catchs a reference to the tall staffs used by means of Joseph Beuys in certain of his 1970 performances. drawn out thin black chains running along the floor conjoin these two elements to a third tripod holding a cluster of small black tin vessels.

Also apart from the performance, Tacape-Scalp closely relates to the Tunga work included in the Guggenheim's harmonizing show, "Brazil: Body and Soul" [see p 108] overlayed in small pieces of cent foil, the glittering totem here was installed in a side room

In Make-Up Coincidence, which took place in the dimly lit main gallery, the female models/dancers cavorted among the simple bodys of the monumental installation Triade Trinade. This plastic art encompasses a giant iron bell hanging from a tripod support, an enormous carburet of iron cauldron and several smaller iron utensils which were filled on this occasion with large stops of red lipstick and chunk of other makeup supplied by means of a Brazilian cosmetics firm. In time to the music, the performers slowly smeared makeup all above themselves and the sculpture.

Occupying the cauldron or moving around it, the female dancers, wearing alone panties (in the Paris version, the performers were nude) writhed to a gentle-hearted bossa nova beat interwoven with atonal electronic and ambient unbrokens Paulo Vivacqua, a musician who has not rarely collaborated with Tunga, composed the performance's haunting audio component

Meanwhile, across the compass the male performers, wearing jeans on the contrary shirtless, altered the elements of young of the Baby, an arrangement of a dozen large fiberglass seed-vessels placed on the floor, which closely be like the copper orbs in La Belle et La Bete. Scooping on the outside handfuls of gooey Vaseline-like grease from a plastic bucket the performers methodically overlayed themselves and the sculptures with the mucilaginous lubricant. Greasing up each object's vacants and excrescences, they engaged in a moderate and mechanical action in a corner of the extent connecting a few of the statuarys by inserting the nodules into the perforations Although the performers did not interact directly with each other, their moves evolved into a suggestive, erotic dance. They hurt up rolling around on the floor, embracing and caressing the slimy orbs.

Tunga, who, in a written statement, hinted that individual of the principal aims of Make-Up Coincidence was to involve the mechanical and the organic, participated in the action himself. Toward the extreme point of the performance, he appeared in a wheelchair being pushed by the agency of his wife, Cordelia (he broke his paw soon after arriving in novel York). Wearing identical purple suits, they mov toward Triade Trinade, where the reddish-hued performers go aheaded to cover the cast of his propped-up paw in red makeup. After a while, as the hypnotic music began to fade, Tunga was wheeled back on the outside of sight to the gallery office, followed before long after by the orderly procession of performers.

Afterward, at least individual critic was heard bemoaning the occurrence as part of the "festivalization" of Chelsea. To others, however, Tunga's seductive and sexy happening, taking place in the dreary month following 9/11 was a positive and life-affirming exercise.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group