Voragem da História at Observatório

Artists: Lais Myrrha, Jaime Lauriano, Daniel de Paula

Exhibition title: Voragem da História (Maelstrom of History)

Curated by: Germano Dushá

Venue: Observatório, São Paulo, Brazil

Date: August 8 – September 5, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Observatório, São Paulo

This August São Paulo receives a new independent space for contemporary art, Observatório. Situated on the rooftop of the iconic Ed. Santa Cruz, designed in the early 50s by architects Jacques Pilon and Giancarlo Gasperini, in the heart of the city center. With a remarkable view spanning from the centro to the city’s mountainous surroundings, Observatório aims at promoting the discussion of contemporary art and culture through exhibitions in which focus is lent to the histories, urgencies and futures of the city.

It’s inaugural exhibition, “Voragem da História” (Maelstrom of History), is a group show featuring Jaime Lauriano, Lais Myrrha and Daniel de Paula:

“From a place in which we see ourselves in the vortex of an anthropic landscape, below the horizon of great constructions and under the effect of a force that keeps our attention flowing through various plans, what do we see if not the fabric of history? In this place from which the vantage point reaches the limit and its depth, we feel our bones shiver in a state of deep vertigo. We imagine the innumerous layers of history rolling in the wind. Like nodules of time, they run through us, at times apart, otherwise attached, juxtaposed, bowled over.

The price of this experience [of going from the stone-age to democracy in a trice] is, above all, nausea. From sun cycles to daily headlines, our bodies swing amidst news of various natures. We hear the grinding of matter in the primordial stew, and in a fraction of a second, the war trumpets, persecutions and revolutions ensuing between the corners of bridges, buildings and cars. While the man-made wrangles, in the wild flux, for a space in the visual field, aesthetic citations and architectonic resolutions are shuffled in a corpulent and precarious stir.

There is no historical meaning, no linearity or chain reaction. We invariably bump into the limits of the verifiable, and see ourselves surrounded by anachronisms: different eras are inclined on each other, and faults are crack opened in the systems of truth they once held. If we pressure certain conditions from which ideas, doctrines an institutions surface, new readings and possible displacements of their practices and roles are born.

Face to face with the city, we are warped into the infinity of narratives and specters. A lack- luster confusion, whose lugubrious and dragging white-noise keeps us trapped.”