São Paulo – Egyptian Iman Issa will be one of the artists with works at the collective exhibition Hallstat, set to open on Saturday (10) at Galpão Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in the São Paulo district of Barra Funda. The theme of the exhibition is duality and the Arab artist is lending sculptures from her series Lexicon, in which she reimagines great artworks.
The exhibition, curated by Brazilians Maria do Carmo de Pontes and Kiki Mazzucchelli, will feature works from 13 artists coming from England, United States, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Canada and Egypt, plus Brazilians from the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Five years ago, the curators began researching counterfeiting strategies in art, and thus they chose the theme of the double for the exhibition. They already held a first exhibition as part of their work, on quackery, and will hold a third part, later on, on the word of the artist, the value of artwork based on what the artist says.
The curator Pontes tells that the goal is not to understand how duality takes place by the similarities between artworks. “We started to look at terms that are more interesting for the double,” she says, mentioning ways in which this appears in the current exhibition and in research, such as recycling, a common thought, an image within an image, the return to somewhere through time, displacement, among other interpretations to the idea.
The artist from Rio de Janeiro, Manoela Medeiros, for instance, peels wall coverings and uses them to make a picture. German Tobias Hoffnecht makes twin structures. “It’s a more pure double,” says Pontes. Irish artist Joshua Sex works the double through recycling of artworks.
Egyptian artist Iman Issa will have three works in the exhibition. They are sculptures that revisit great artworks. Alongside the sculptures, she places panels with the title of the works that were interpreted and a description, but without quite revealing them completely. They are part of a series that the artist started to work on 2012 and is ongoing. Issa was born in Cairo and currently lives between the Egyptian capital and New York, United States.
The name of the show, Hallstat, makes a reference to a beautiful lakeside village surrounded by mountains in Austria, which was duplicated by the Chinese. In the Chinese province of Guangdong, China built a city just like Hallstat. The Austrian village holds the world’s oldest salt mine and one of Europe’s oldest archeological sites.
In addition to the artists aforementioned, also featured in the exhibition are works by Alexandre da Cunha, born in Belo Horizonte and currently living in London; Amie Siegel, from Chicago and now living in New York; Candice Lin, from Massachusetts and resident of Los Angeles; Caragh Thuring, born in Brussels and living in London; Daniel Sinsel, from Munich and currently living in London; Mauro Restiffe, from São José do Rio Pardo and living in São Paulo; Nuno Ramos, from São Paulo; Oliver Laric, an Austrian artist living in Germany; and Tamara Henderson, from Canada.
There will be an opening for the general public this Friday (9), from 8 pm to 10 pm.
Quick info
Hallstat – Collective Exhibition
From December 10, 2016, to February 10, 2017
Galpão Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, rua James Holland, 71 – Barra Funda – São Paulo – SP
Opening hours: until December 22, Tuesday to Friday, from 10 am to 7 pm, and Saturday, from 10 am to 6 pm – From January 9 to February 10, Monday to Thursday, from 10 am to 7 pm, Friday, from 10 am to 6 pm (Closed from December 23 to January 8)
Information: +55 (11) 3392 3942 or http://fdag.com.br/exposicoes/hallstatt/
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani