Artist: Sara Ramo
Exhibition title: Labour or The Game of Life
Venue: Travesía Cuatro, Madrid, Spain
Date: February 25 – April 30, 2022
Photography: Pablo Gómez-Ogando / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Travesía Cuatro, Madrid
(…)
we take a walk through the fields,
where we find a meatless femur inside a red boot
close the windows,
watch movies now
suck their not so big toes
boiled stones
so many
things around there, gums stuck
we have to paint with the remains of a brick
the briefcase does not seem to open
while playing they confuse a dry poo with a piece of plaster
laughing out loud: hahaha
: Instructions :
There is no concordance. We stammer and learn a crashing language. We perceive the greatness of the divided verb and we make sand flans with the shovel.
We will embrace our ghosts, looking for holes to slip through, missing food without the shock of the reasonable mind. Explanations are demands now, but we know: we must be born without results. Clinging to the abyss, overcoming the formula like a kamikaze drop. Risking time, circumventing the constancy of data, having a disposition for other enchantments.
: Board :
And everything fits. There is no need to exclude the generated garbage. It is a vital matter to make them ours. Mine and yours: resistant generators. The metamorphosis will be endorsed by the tension between what lives and dies, all included, also what suffers and causes suffering.
The invented, the secret mythologies of the worlds to be opened will be in a circle each time a beginning. So; there is no conclusion. There are fake rocks, slippers, dried poos, curtains on the windows, a glove, candy wrapper, cardboard. It doesn’t matter, everything is material and alive.
: Rules of the game :
We are here, a gallery, a museum, a fair…! Venues where art supposedly occurs. We don’t do somersaults triumphantly, that, at least. There is love in the implicit failure… the thing is more complex. The content of each piece is transmuted in its relationship with the others. There is no previous rehearsal, the pulsing improvisation tells us: the attempt is already life. The game begins and may not end, or fit. We will be old infants. We will remember that science is also a metaphysical delusion and we will not let ourselves be trapped by its definitions. We will be vampires, that is to say: bodies of the badass laughter, generators of doubts in the coherence learnt. We will be mixed in the given scene, between tragic pain and comedy, because like life itself, only the theater.
: Squares on the back of the paper :
There is a proposal, floating numbers, meaning, not necessarily in that order and not exactly everything.
1. Clouds and storms
2. Making friends
3. Some violence
4. Managing numbers
5. Deep depression
6. A matter of class
7. World vision
8. Important demands
9. Happy days
10. Cannon fodder
11. The forgiveness of the goddesses
12. There is no body
13. Felonies
14. More of the same
15. Tropical elite
16. Sudden disorder
17. Sharing space
18. Nonetheless
19. Hit-and-run
20. Fantastic universe
21. Filth
22. Some drugs
23. Sloth of existing
24. Future forecast
25. Making no sense
26. Anxiety and excesses
27. Negotiating abuses
28. Seven errors
29. Communitytheater
30. Opening breaches
31. Insolent hand
32. Social norms
33. Extreme exhaustion
34. Part of
35. Creative force
36. Foreign skin
37. Scientific method
38. Street monster
39. Good manners
40. Mastery of language
41. Necessity
42. Cocktail food
43. Short-circuit
44. The world is ugly
45. Throwing stones
46. Unruly remains
47. More drugs
48. Found papers
49. Talking with strangers
50. Esthetic dispute
51. Calendar
52. Love to everything
53. Idealistic dream
54. Feel like crying
55. State crime
56. Black holes
57. Cruel ties
58. More lies
59. Horizon of events
60. Mine and yours
61. Entangle
62. Constant rebellion
63. Principle of difference
64. At the gates
65. Caution and chaos
66. Incontrolable enthusiasm
67. Invasions and deserts
68. Righteous wound
69. Flight
70. Irreverent cavity
71. Everything is spiral
72. Art inhabits
In Labour or The Game of Life, Sara Ramo (Madrid, 1975) invites us to be active spectators and to make our own connections, joining dots and clues that we encounter walking through the gallery spaces. From a list of 72 questions, in this scenario or game board the artist regroups previous works, new works, works to be done, gestures and stumbles. There are concerns and occupations that are part of any artist’s life. In this case, Sara questions the economy and the production of works, as well as the ways to generate meaning in an increasingly complex context.
Ramo works directly with the elements that define immediate daily life in order to reconfigure them into strange and foreign presences. The alteration of the natural order of things is not a simple formal exercise, for the artist this represents the possibility to create new structures of sensitivity. Ramo participates in a vast heritage from a cultural tradition that has confronted the utilitarian and scientific perspective of the modern world; incorporating notions from mysticism, mythology and magic, the artist questions the relationship between human beings and objects that are only determined by utility. Fracturing this paradigm, new narrative possibilities emerge, involving spatial and temporal consequences.
Her recent exhibitions have taken place in institutions such as Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Jalisco, Mexico, 2020; Reina Sofía Museum, 2019; Alcalá 31, Madrid, 2019; Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, 2017; Punto Ciego, EAC – Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, 2014; Matadero, Madrid; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, 2013; CA2M (Centro Dos de Mayo, Madrid), among others. The artist’s work has been shown in international exhibitions such as the XIII Bienal de La Habana; 33rd Biennial of São Paulo, 2018; the Panorama da Arte Brasileira at MAM-São Paulo (2011), Sharjah Biennial 11 and at 2010 São Paulo Biennial; 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre in 2013 and 2007; the Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 10th Anniversary of Inhotim, Belo Horizonte.
Her work is part of international collections including: Reina Sofía Museum, Fundación Botín; Banco de España; Pérez Art Museum of Miami; Casa di Risparmio di Modena; Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, Miami; Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand – MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Coleção Itaú Cultural; FRAC; Inhotim, Brumadinho; Margulies Collection.
Sara Ramo lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
