Studio Visits

My interest in Monica Rizzolli‘s work stems from when I learned about various performance projects she was involved in. One of those is her work for In.CoRpo.Ro (2004-2007), an artistic event organised in São Paulo, consisting of three editions and fourth one in form of a magazine, and dealing with issues of performance art and practice as well as integrating seminars and theoretic debates. Monica works with topics evolving around the body, gender, human relations, and their role in society. One of her performances, “Lição de Afeto“ (Lesson of Affect - 2003/2004) included asking people on the São Paulo subway for hugs. In a place that is usually crowded, but where people rarely interact and may even feel isolated, the artist put the frontiers between private and public space, approximation and separation into question and challenged notions of accepted and normal behaviour. Coming from a performance background and with an art education from the university UNESP, Monica still engages with those topics in the paintings she produces today.

I am visiting her studio in Santo Amaro. It is a two-storey house that belongs to a photographer and which allows for a lot of space for her to work. On the second floor of the building, Monica has set up her easel. At the moment I visit her, she is just finishing works for her exhibition at the newly opening Central Galeria de Arte in Pinheiros in November 2010.

Continue reading "In Monica Rizzolli's studio: performance and..." »

Tatiana Blass’ performance “Metade da Fala no Chão - Piano Surdo” (Half of the Speech on the Floor – Deaf Piano – 2010) at this year’s Sao Paulo Biennial caught my attention: During the opening of the exhibition, two actors spilled hot wax over a piano while a pianist was performing Chopin. The wax did not only change the tone of the instrument and turned the music mute, but also infiltrated the chords, keys and lacquer. The hot material became stiff and interfered with the functionality of the piano, wrecked it and at the same time proposed a beautiful new sculpture, leaving the dessicating material on the floor as trace of the performance. Having played the piano for years myself, this work left a strong impact on me. For those who would like to see the artist’s comment (in Portuguese) check out:


I visit Tatiana Blass in her spatious studio that is integrated into the lower floor of her house. Apart from her numerous works around musical instruments, such as a trombone whose function is denied with the tubes bending into a circle (“Trombone de vara” (Trombone - 2008) from the series “Metade da Fala no Chão”), I became interested in meeting her when I saw her paintings of dogs and airplanes. I was wondering how these two figures whose connection did not seem quite obvious to me came together in her multilayered paintings.
Continue reading "Of music, dogs and airplanes - Tatiana Blass’..." »

I visit Fabio Okamoto at his place in Brooklin. After a rather rough bus ride, I arrive and we start chatting about living in São Paulo and the cultural diversity between its population. Fabio has an education from the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade de São Paulo. During the week, he works as graphic designer. He has set up his works on the dining table and we start looking at his photographs, which he neatly keeps in cardboard cases.



Fabio explains that he started working with black and white photography and analogue cameras. He tried to find forms and details in the city that the not so attendant viewer would not even notice. His images of São Paulo from the series Hidden City (2001/2003) were taken from one of the high buildings in the city centre and show the typical skyline of never ending concrete. Due to the multiple exposure Fabio employs in surrealist tradition, there seems to be a motion that opens a view on the city the naked eye cannot see. These photographs reveal the feeling of movement that is so typical for this metropolis. In some of the images, the architecture is covered by a veil, a piece of cloth the wind blows into a certain form, which repeats itself in other parts of Fabio’s work. Then, there is a series of spaces that most paulistanos usually would not know themselves, demolished buildings in the city centre, that Fabio prefers to depict at night when there is less activity and a more interesting lighting to capture.

Continue reading "Fabio Okamoto's media permeating photography" »