Ascânio MMM

“Grid” is an exhibition that presents the last 25 years of Ascânio MMM’s work (1941-) and his particular relationship with the grid, a striking sign for artists such as Ascânio, who helped to rethink the foundations of abstract-geometric thinking in Brazil. The grid, as it is often pronounced in the vocabulary of the arts, also represents the dialogue that he maintains, since the beginning of its trajectory in the 1960s, with sculpture and architecture.

Ascânio, as art critic Paulo Herkenhoff emphasizes, belongs to a second generation of constructive artists based in Rio de Janeiro. After the pioneering actions of Frente Group (1954-56) and Neoconcretism (1959-1961), bringing together artists such as Amilcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape and critics such as Ferreira Gullar and Mário Pedrosa in favor of an experimental production that reformulated the foundations of sculpture and painting, as well as the passive behavior of the public, the generation of Ascânio – and I cite artists such as Athos Bulcão, Paulo Roberto Leal, Raymundo Colares, Wanda Pimentel, among others –, already involved in the complex plot of the dictatorship, prolongs this disruptive capacity that the visual arts come to have. I remember that, in 1960, Gullar developed the “Theory of the non-object” as a way of questioning the new frontiers that sculpture and painting, now added to the category “object” and its negative condition, evidencing the complexity of artistic nominations in the post-war period, they would begin to elaborate.

Among the several contributions that Ascânio brings to the artistic field – passing, for example, by his pioneering in the occupation of public space with his large-scale sculptures or the sense of participation that sculpture comes to have in his iconic Caixas series (Boxes), when its structure becomes an open and purposeful game, bringing a playful aspect to the sculpture –, something that is remarkable in its production is the grid. More than a recurring element, it is the engine for other sensibilities.

What unites these works, in addition to the grid layout, is the way in which they maintain a balance between the material, invariably the metal, and its organic or phenomenological capacity. As if that were not enough, they deal with the idea of measuring the body or the gesture, as they demand the presence of the spectator, with increasing desire. The choice for the last 25 years of production is also due to the fact that they are works that are still little seen by the public – especially those from Paraná.

Furthermore, they are works that can assume the position of inventing a place, as they mobilize a constant transformation of spaces; they have an interest in investigating new productions which I will roughly name as landscapes. In the “Flexos” series, for example, the pierced mesh of the sculptures allows our gaze to “pierce” the volume, promoting not only an incessant dialogue between art and architecture, but the very design formation of a territory. Through minimal gestures, Ascânio allows the void to take shape, through a game of shadows and lights, and to establish itself as visibility and space. Architecture, in fact, a field of such special interest to the history of Paraná, is what moves the artist in his creations. In his works, it is possible to perceive, for example, how a dialogue is engendered with Moorish traditions and the legacy that the mashrabiya brought to the contemporary world.

Its hollow structures operate as a translucent body, or a grid that appears as if it were open or floating to the interactions and landscapes that cross them. Made of aluminum, wire and stainless steel bolts, his sculptures appear to be unstable and soft bodies. Ingeniously, Ascânio attributes this air quality to some of the heaviest elements, essentially linked to industry. The works are made in this process of never placing themselves as complete, closed, and ready. I would also say that the city's own strength brings dynamics to this work. If the materials that Ascânio chooses to produce are commonly connected to the field of engineering and architecture, it is not difficult to imagine that they hypothetically reveal the image of a construction site, of course, of another order and consequence. The grid is a reference to everything that goes back to construction, architecture, geometry. These are aspects that are extensively investigated by the artist.

His works, by delimiting areas starting from a gesture of overlapping lines, create a relationship between figure and background, and on the limit between line and materiality, with the grid being exposed in an ambiguous interval that manifests appearance and dissolution. They simultaneously reveal meshes and cobogós (hollow brick wall), taking our imagination to different times and places, and reliving in our memories forms that are part of our own history. Still in the field of memory, the “soft” structures of “Quacors”, “Qualas” and “Quasos”, formed by dozens of small squares of aluminum interconnected by rings, emit a very characteristic sound. The rustling of the pieces ends up giving the work an affective image.

The strength of these works is contained in a state that oscillates between balance and order, on the one hand, and instability and organicity, on the other. These are architectures that explore the memory and affectivity of a city space. Another insightful feature of these works is that they are tactile. There is an invitation to touch that creates a skin circumstance even in these metallic shapes. In some moments, as in works from the “Qualas” and “Quasos” series, a desire to wear these works almost imposes itself. I say that it is a crooked grid and that it assumes its own wobbly condition. What exists is the grid as a suggestion of a space that promotes encounters and the completion of a playful atmosphere. Furthermore, the movement is no longer suggested, but provoked by the spectator. It is clear that in the aforementioned “Caixas” the movement was there, but in the works of this show there is freedom and a greater field for this action. The mobile and sensual potentialities, I would say, of the grid gain a new capacity to expand. The variations of this game of building spaces between the work and the spectator gain almost infinite possibilities. It is not by chance, therefore, that most of the works are related, in terms of their size, to the anthropomorphic scale. The works have the dimension of the gesture and the human scale.

“Flexos”, “Pyramidals”, “Prisms”, “Qualas”, “Quasos” and “Quacors” explore, at first sight, the rigor of forms and lines, a legacy of the constructive tradition in Brazilian art, however, we are led by a non-formalistic narrative that encourages optical games, explores the subtle shades of shades and changes the “perfect” format of the grid: what interests Ascânio is an indiscipline of this plan. In this tangle of metallic structures, the grid becomes an illusory, soft and participatory structure, provoking sensitivities and affections to what is usually identified as the order of objective construction.

Felipe Scovino