Angella Conte

Other projects

Critical Texts

Rafael Maldonado

The sense of things

In Angella’s work the landscape takes place of importance between the themes selected by the artist. This relationship with landscape/nature isn’t contemplative. The message that criticize put us in front of the environment problems that we watch without a proper manifestation.

When we become silent, the art speaks . In this field aesthetic/politic that work as From riverhead to mouth and Environment act as reflection agents, directing our look to questions that, for convenience, we leave behind. If the exuberant sound and images of a waterfall of the river presented climate of suspensions by a blue lighting can be understood as a poetic combination full of visual, the artist alerts for a possible future scarcity: although its beauty, this river may not exist one day.

The passage of time and the scars formed in consequence of this are same of the dilemmas present in this production that launches a war cry.

Rafael Maldonado
curator

Andrés I. M. Hernández

Afluentes do Signo

Serei um dia simples
Sereno por excesso
Conciso barroco
Declina o silêncio
Sempre terá sido jamais.
Ronaldo Brito
em Quarta do singular, Duas cidades, São Paulo,1989.

The space has been, since the beginning of the modern art, an element to be taken in consideration when you think in an expositive project.There are many example, like the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, na Galerie Beaux-Arts, in Paris, 1947 and the “Salon de Madame B.à Dresden” of Mondrian. In the Brazilian context, the Project Wall of the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo, the windows of the “Beatriz Milhazes exhibition: painting, collage”, in the Estação Pinacoteca and the recent exhibition of Cildo Meirelles and Artur Bairro, among others, showing that this though was already consolidated.

Angella Conte, in a production literally contemporary, she creates her work as installations. Each of her work rests in terms of material and formal, as it incorporates the spatial context in which it inserts. In a selection of work that took into account, especially, the adequacy of the available exhibition space, the exhibition “Da Nascente à Foz” [From the Riverhead to the Mouth], in the Forestal Museum Octavio Vecchi, resume, as in a piece of the whole, this characteristic of the artist.

The configuration of the stylistic and conceptual work of Conte tell us the size of rigorous and thorough use of sophisticated features that lead us to a journey whose origin dates back to the beginning of Art History.
The artist, moving through various artistic styles, explores different media. Initially the picture and, soon, the sculpture and the video, always focused on the design.

The exhibition at the ground floor of the Forestal Museum Octavio Vecchi and one of the lakes at the park raises a concern of the Museum creator. If, in his case, the concern was with deforestation – what took him to consider ways to reduce the environmental impacts – in the exhibition “Da Nascente à Foz” the artist’s goal is to present, through the work shown, the concern about the conservation of the water reserve of the planet.

The artist, who has a systematic research on the various stages of cognitive and temporal spiral, use these elements when setting up their manifestos (read works of art).It is observed in her work, resonance discourse (speech and debate) the nature of the relationship between natural life and dead, through a representation of gender "still life", which emphasizes the procedures or intervals between two states. By placing in a expography context, either two dimensional or three dimensional, elements and others from Museum grounds, the artist moves the discussion on the field of the art properly.

In the work Silence branches and roots of trees “invade” the grades. In the pictures, there is an answer from de nature to the men action: a kind of silent protest for their freedom, for life, subjectively represented by one of the most discussed and contemporary artistic languages. Even the metals, extracted from nature, rebels, as a result of a disastrous enterprise of the men, which is reversed against himself. The work can be seen from any side of the room, in a context where the other work on display interacts with it, as part of the whole. Each piece of the work acts like a support to the other, generating a process without beginning or end.

A video of the Piracicaba River, beyond its meaning "immediate present", in itself, establishes a connection from recent work of the artist who occupies this floor of the Museum. The projection of the flow of the river challenges the viewer by creating a game between the absence and presence. Absence of the river that is not quite there, but appears only represented by a succession of images. A river that now exists, but may don’t exist tomorrow, becoming a dual metaphor for the present and future. The blue lights hanging from the ceiling, and whose reflection appears in the circle of mirrors on the floor, also allude to the shadows and light, instant recall of the body, but this time mixed with light, projection, joy, guilt and desires.

The place and the non-place, the presence and absence are concepts to be evaluated in the show. The projection appears as a denial of the dissolution of the past, as if it was presented at that time. It is conceived as a literal origin, a start from scratch, a birth, as the source of the memory, which brings us to the moving image. The film becomes a metaphor on organismic not so much a formal invention, but the sources of life. Allows us to establish an absolute distinction between this "almost" tried and a past full of memories and tradition.

The intervention in the lake has elements with the same symbolic significance of the record of the river in the video. These similarities make the vision of a whole new meaning and, metaphorically, a discussion on contemporary art, actually, the use of common elements of everyday life. Added to this other question, no less contemporary, which is environmental conservation, in the specific case, the concern with the end of the water reserves of the planet. Through it also shows a discussion of socio-political background, rarely seen in contemporary Brazilian artistic production.

In this concern, this is also a relationship between the color works, a game between the elements "invaders" and which constitute the elements of the local context: trees, plants, animals, water and the white cube of the modern exhibition space. The artist makes these elements fall in the conceptual discussion of the proposal. Establishes a figure-ground relationship in which the elements already existing and new alternate indiscriminately, disputing the philosophical categories already mentioned: space and time.

There is a contemporary understanding of space and time the extent to which ideas and objects, designed to time and different ways, establish a relationship timeless in content and form. These procedures provide for the refusal to the identification, classification and distinction. In fact, there are no limits. It is as if the representation of the river in the video, on the ground floor was converted into an object such as salts and minerals that are mixed into the water and break up any definition are placed side by side.

The basins of aluminum, in one of the artificial lakes of the woods, give a warm welcome to visitors. Objects out of place and inserted in a space anachronistic cause the visitor a strangeness of the place. There is a symbolism in the set, which leads to this strange, but at the same time, allows the association with the interference human being and many interventions in natural contexts.

Brightness that are related to the classification of the legendary and universal plenty of power. Metaphor of possibilities and power. A power referred to the ignorance and carelessness. Metal and water. Soluble or not? Water: pure or polluted? Metal on water: the power shortage on the water, and plenty of limits. And the river at the same time symbolize shortage. There is, symbolically, a game of power and distance, fantasy and reality that can become melancholy.

In this case, the inaccessibility of the basins, bring a message that runs away from its usual protective function, limiting them spatial and practically. It is a synonymous of alert. A call to reflection. Objects that, out of context and with its role transferred to non-place, they gain a new symbolic value that this time, and the place where they were inserted, warn us about how our actions can still prevent a disaster.

At the same time, here, the relationship with the landscape will generate discussion in relation to "interference" in the experiences, memories of everyone who visits the place with personal references, allowing the insertion of each one, based on these personal experiences in approach and interpretation of the artist's proposals.

In the installation Fonte, the photography is explored in some of its possibilities: as the two-dimensional representation and the incorporation of three-dimensionality in the case of use of the backlight. The representation of a dry fountain reminds us of the sense of absence. Failure to neutralize its function, which justifies its use. Without water, the fountain becomes useless, unnecessary. An object without function and meaning.

In the video Environment I , four scenes revolve in a clockwise direction on the image of an uncontrollable and incalculable mass of people. The artist, in the reverse process, her hair - that was wet - dry, consistent with the melting of an iceberg of the poles, one private and one bath. Here, reality is represented as full of potential situations and time of memories is not necessarily the past. There is a representation of the environment in the work of Conte, as well as a systemic symbolism in the work of the artist, in whatever media she uses.

In the pictures EntrePlanos, Serra da Cantareira, images of a unique beauty and infinite allow us to see the most cruel acts of man over nature, the result of excessive growth of the metropolis of Sao Paulo. The result that metaphorically grows as trees grow for supporting natural of the land and especially in contact with water. In this case, the product are of concrete and steel, are the pollution and the gray. If the pictorial representation of the artist contains an indisputable truth, the reality is an attack without limits on Mother Earth. The contours of the Sierra dilute the limits of buildings and structures that stand as spiral of invasion, showing a balance of power and antagonism visual and scenic.

But there is hope in the representation, Conte caught in Planet Earth the rising sun repeatedly at different intervals of time and space. Another time, the dawn presents static, in wooden boxes, as a relic.

In Brazil, unlike the vast majority of Latin Americans, the art of social protest is limited to short and sporadic periods. Few artists and curators reflect or discuss the issue. Conte, however, brings up the discussion on the theme of the environment with a social bias that transcends local boundaries in the discussion of a theme with universal overtones.

In each of the works of Conte, is in evidence, one a way or another, the singularity, authenticity, uniqueness and originality, setting in each project, a direct connection to the original moment in which the result becomes a reflection of empirical and semiological. In this way, the meaning intended by the artist becomes the condition of repeating the same meaning and thus, in every meaning is implied a prior decision to convert it into a vehicle sign.

The uniqueness of each piece is linked to images that are successively represented, as well as the way in which these images are recorded in our imagination: not in static, but through a constant and uninterrupted replenishment. This uniqueness is based on the recognition of the viewer at the moment of perception, with reference to image a live object, or even in the presence of this object.

The exhibition, therefore, shows that works, even separated by proposals, together create a single chain and organic discussion and awareness.

Andrés I. M. Hernández
Curator and art critic
Sao Paulo in February 2009.

From the riverhead to the mouth

Angella Conte, born in Jaboticabal, presents an exhibition where all the pieces fit together like a great system giving a speech to the preservation of water reserves of the planet. On the basis of the exhibition space, in the case, the Forest Museum “Octávio Vecchi) and its surroundings, the artist creates a series of works that reflect about art, nature and human actions. It is exactly for that intimate relationship that the work has with the place which state that her work is very contemporary, as the area has been, since the beginning of the modern art, an element to be taken into account at the time to think of any expositive project .

But beyond the character of manifest and social denunciation which permeates the entire exhibition, the work proposed an expansion in the way that you usually conceives the relationship of man with nature. The activation of the memory of a landscape that has no more (or may disappear soon), the experience with nature transformed into an experience with images, the joy we feel to observe the course of a river transposed to a museum ( place of aesthetic contemplation by excellence), are some of the sensations that the work arouses.

The artist shows pictures, videos, three-dimensional works, finally the most diverse media to amplify the public debate on this issue as current as relevant today.

Andrés I. M. Hernández
Curator

Oscar D´ Ambrosio

What’s inside is outside

Angella Conte is a visual arts artist and her installation Inside Outside was exhibited at the 12º Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea [12th Contemporary Art Salon of São Paulo]; she discusses much more than the simple issue of the relation between internal and external elements of a house. This instance may be perhaps less important, as a subversive look at the world is being launched.

On one hand, the two simultaneous videos bring actions of the private world to the street, such as reading the news sitting on the couch in a living-room, and take the universe of the street to the day-to-day, such as walking with an umbrella. They discuss the power of the art in proposing a new look on the day-to-day elements carried out by habit and without reasoning.

In addition, there is a sequence of photos taken inside the house, showing images of the street and the record of sounds from the external environment. The discussion of limits is accompanied by a mixture of perceptions that enable one to know how to feel, by any of the senses, associated to the dialogue that anyone maintains with the world.

The act of seeing each moment of the day-to-day in a new environment generates the need to do each new action afresh. The works of the artist are a manifesto against automatic procedures, a questioning marked by poetry on the lack of attention with which we regard what we are doing and the absence of a dense thinking on this performance.

Angella Conte reveals how the action of the public world on the private sphere grows into mystery; and the banal act, in the dimension of the socially visible, generates denudation. The inner part of the human being, in both situations, wins the sphere of that what is known. The veil is removed and the doubt is being installed instead, on how great the day-to-day is in its tininess.

Oscar D’Ambrosio, journalist and Master of Visual Arts at the Instituto de Artes of the UNESP [Art Institute of the State of São Paulo University], integrates the Associação Internacional de Críticos de Arte (AICA- Brazilian Section).

Juliana Monachesi

Angella Conte is an artist who collects things. At first, she collects by looking at the objects around her; in the city and its breathing and waste; at what people leave behind them, marks on objects and cities. As the artist collects, in practice she gathers things; she takes in things, takes photos, and photos and photos. All these things she gathers, she gives them back to the world with a new status, these things that were worthless suddenly have a new meaning.

Up to 2004, the artistic production of Angella Conte was predominantly made in stone, but even then, before introducing photographic and installation practices in her work, there always was that drive to collect and the affectionate trace of her poetry: the cutting and carving a form in stone was a first attempt to search the encounter with the inscrutable part of the world. In 2006, this tendency became clear as the artist took photographs of the quarries of marble extraction and chose to give the name of the local workers as title of the photos.

From this work on, her aesthetic investigation was marked by the utilization of all the stages included in the work: the growing involvement with the people, the things, the waste, will determine the opening of her production to several languages, resulting in work series – and no more single or more pieces – that do not exclude anything from the process, not the sound and not the context, really nothing, but everything becoming raw material for the expression of a restless search.

Juliana Monachesi
São Paulo, March 2008

Vera Martins

Angella Conte when creates a reality, she builds a world that has never been seen and in an appropriate light comes out instigative images.

In an open vision of the world, there isn’t a single state or a limit, the conscience can also be understood as a party in motion. Nothing is permanent or stationary, there is an investigation process, a way to approach the world not as a series of accuracy truth, but about question and possibilities, often unexpected configurations- such as a purpose of acting at the same time on the instinct and intellect.

Angella deals with camera or the video in the same way she deals with the paintbrush. In this work the important is the original ideas and not only the marks of the artist’s hands on the work.

She collects objects belonging to our daily routine, from discarded object without apparent any utility, to souvenirs of visited places, notes from friends, most of the spoken subjects are all familiar…It is one inorganic waste, which do not rot and you can’t discard, similar with our own memory.

In this work they were not made only to be seen: Her vision should put in movement a production of ideas in the spectator, considering the spectator as a active part of the process.

Vera Martins
Artista plástica

Kátia Canton

As Paisagens-Passagens de Angella Conte ( The landscape passages of Angella Conte)
I was born to manage nothing
in vain
useless.

I belong to image.
I operate by similarities.
I get similarities of people with trees
people with frogs
of people with stones
etc.

I get similarities of trees with me.
I have no ability for clarity.
I need to get wisdom from plants.
(Plant Wisdom is naturally received a frog in the stem.)
And when it is appropriate for rock, I will have wisdom mineral. Manoel de Barros*

*"Desejar Ser"
In Livro Sobre Nada (1966-1998)
Ed. Record, 3a. ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1996

Angella Conte creates her landscapes beginning from a feeling of similarity.

In it is included the field or the city, the nature or the urban environment.The artist creates situations where this surroundings mixed and confuse each other.

No matter the scenario, the protagonist is always the human being, between the desire and the emptiness. The engine that moves the work is always the dilemma of human life at the possibility of solitude. In this incessant movement, generated just to try to avoid, comfort it and adapt to it.

It is because of these movements that the Angella Conte’s landscape turn to images of flow. It is landscape-passages, that inherit from life their ephemeral power. In the poetic of the artist, everything transforms and is consistently rescued.

As life goes on and the blood that runs in the veins, things do its path. Construct a narrative biased, creating images that expand, reverberates, intrigue and confuse.

To display her pictures, videos and installations the artist look for remains, pieces of the world and organize it slowly, looking carefully and affectively to each of them.

The same field replete with rolls of hay, for example, is the raw material for different kind of work. In Provisão, the field is illuminated with a back light and framed by wood windows. Here, the artist creates a poetic of time, where the action is created to provide a livelihood. It is a present that envisions a future, reminiscent of the fable of Fontaine, The Grasshopper and The Ant.

Since the two works that make the series Entre o Céu e a Terra (Between Heaven and Earth), this field is miniaturized, horizontalized and, finally closed between walls of mirrors and cotton. The surfaces that reflect and soften, respectively, make these images relics, imagistic jewelry to be protected by the time.

In the photomontage Paisagem Urbana (Urban Landscape), the alleys that are in the spotlight of the images. Corners, junctions and tapered passages are taken in many cities and villages and repeatedly in a squeezed architecture, where lack of space creates a sense of crushing. We project ourselves into this tight space and it feels like in a chronic lack of air and freedom.

In the video Paisagem 2 ( Landscape 2), an open window presents adjacent areas. Would it be such a landscape inside, dark, where you see only silhouette of two objects in motion? The empty chair scales, in a repetitive cadence and vague. The bird, attached to the ceiling by a transparent thread, has its wings open and close, driven by the movement of the wind.

Outside is day. In the external landscape, what one sees is green and rain. Green areas draw mountains and show small houses. The fog hides the horizon, while other thread stretches little soaked fabrics flags.

Only subtle noises and indecipherable cross the power of that silence made of light and dark, suspension and movement. The landscape is everything.

The work Procurando (Searching) seals the exhibition with a displacement. Here, the nature is replaced by culture, the green, changed by a plane.

The box frame shows a beautiful accumulation of paper. Tickets, used by artist herself, mixed with the letters, local maps, trip notes. A piece of Eiffel Tower, the picture of Stature of Liberty. Images and texts add up in the thickness of the box.

The visual effect is a tapestry of colors, textures, images. Conceptually, Procurando (Searching) reflects an endless search, whose route seems always finish in it own origin. Then, we try again.

We search for the other, seek for affection, seek for happiness. We look for similarities of the men with the tree and the frog, even ,with the stone. Like Manoel de Barros would say.

By Katia Canton