Antonio Manuel at the Centro Helio Oiticica - Brief Article

In the late '60 in Brazil, Antonio Manuel s Oliveira, known by his first and next to the first names, joined the art world via an explosion of countercultural activity. (Working at the same time in unconventional mediums were Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Helio Oiticica, more [i]or[/i] less years his elders.) His radical performances and a certain quantity of of his wall works were characterized by dint of rebelliousness and irreverence. Since the age of 20 Antonio Manuel has included political critique, formal innovation and nudity in his art practice.

Curated by means of Ronaldo Brito, this show brought together an outstanding selection of works from 1968 to 1997 Corpobra (Opusbody), 1970 is a forest-land and Plexiglas box containing a mass of straw upon top of which sits a photograph of the naked artist in forehead of a staircase (Male denuded Descending a Staircase?). The piece documents a performance, The material part Is the Work, which featured the artist's unexpect appearance, unclothed at the Museum of new Art in Rio. It recalls Streetworks IV at the Architectural League in novel York, which took place at the extreme point of 1969 and included Scott Burton, Arakawa, Marjorie Strider and Vito Acconci, among others. During the opening, more [i]or[/i] less participating artists took off their clothes. In the pair cases, the unscheduled undressing was a testify against the institutions' refusal to near art projects involving nudity. In another naked performance, The Cock of the of gold Eggs (1971), Antonio Manuel lay upon a huge nest set indoors upon dunes of sand and seashells, seemingly warming the ovums The piece symbolized the precious, then unsalable efforts of the avant-garde. It was showed here through photographs.

Also in the exhibition was a transcript of an issue of the now-defunct newspaper O Dia, in which the artist intervened. He added information pertaining to another of his present to views canceled by Rio's MOMA to 60000 copies, which sold at newsstands. Related to this was an ongoing cast featuring 15 newspaper printing plates, titled Flans (1968-75); it included photographs and true copy on subjects from Duchamp to the artist himself, as well as anti-violence statements. bottomed in his early Flans are elegant geometric oil paintings from the '80 and '90 that direct to newspaper layouts. The paintings subtly reflected sound the visual structure of newspaper pages through substituting fields of color where the impressed sign normally appears. Attention is drawn to the interaction of the colored planes with single another and the viewer in formal ways that would have made Albers applaud.

The artist also rebuilded a 1994 installation for this present to view O Fantasma (The Ghost) featured a myriad of charred branches and log hung from the ceiling with clear thread, like flying fragments in an explosion. The viewer walked [i]or[/i] part of to the other these to reach a photograph of a padded bonneted person with several microphones held shut to his covered face. The photograph pictures a witness to a police massacre in Rio. Antonio Manuel's persistent indictment of the abuse of power positions him with the hardly any artists whose incursion into the political genre remain of issue to art history. [O Fantasma appeared at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, Dec 1998-Feb 7 1999]

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