The Oscar Niemeyer Museum opens, on June 22, the unprecedented exhibition “Hole in the Sky”, by visual artist Túlio Pinto. Produced by MON, in the Eye space, it brings together 32 sculptures and installations, some of which are large in size, which explore the power of the three-dimensional. The curatorship is by Roberta Stubs.
“Visitors will realize that this show is almost an optical illusion in which the artist promotes an unusual dialogue between materials of different valences. It makes the heavy seem light, the fragile become strong”, says the Museum’s director-president, Juliana Vosnika.
“Marble and steel are side by side, iron beams seem to float and coexist with glass sheets, in an almost poetic construction”, she says. As in a conjuring trick, the audience may feel hypnotized by the set and will probably be led to a reflective gaze.
According to Juliana, when the artist surprises us with the possibility of balance and harmony between agents of opposite natures, his work fulfills the role, as does the institution that houses it and brings it closer to the public. “One of the functions of art is to instigate and transform people”, she comments.
For the Secretary of State for Culture, Luciana Casagrande, the new exhibition consolidates the Eye as an exhibition space that is increasingly diverse and interesting for the public. “With each exhibition, visitors have a different experience. It is a privilege for the State to have such a noble space and be so democratic at the same time. Now it's Túlio Pinto's turn, an award-winning artist, internationally recognized, to leave his mark here”, she says.
The curator of the exhibition comments that the exhibition “calls us to cross worlds and to open a passageway between universes that are often dissonant”. For her, to be in front of Túlio Pinto's work is to share a state of suspension with solid materialities that seem to float.
“To move our body between his sculptures and installations is to transit through an interrupted time and space, where the laws of physics, governed here by a different logic, give way to an enchantment in a state of alert”, says Roberta.
About the works
Steel beams cross the space and glass plates that are balanced between stones and support cables. Standing in front of Túlio Pinto's works is like walking in a hanging garden made up of solid materialities that seem to float in time and space.
Different elements build, among themselves, a certain complicity that surprises due to the tense alliance signed between dissonant natures such as stone, iron, glass, air, marble, and the body. Skilled in creating almost architectural structures, the artist introduces fields of tension that put the categories of order and functionality into question.
Solid and transparent, some works gain an air of opacity when invested due to the risk of falling (or even breaking) that threatens the stability of the different weights and measures that constitute the works. Túlio Pinto surprises with the control he exerts over rigid materialities such as steel, glass, and concrete. A mastery that is given by the strength of the flexibility of materials taken to the limit.
In many works, there is the resistance of the glass stretched to the extreme by the stiffness of the steel. At a glance, it is the air that seems to support the weight of these rigid beams or blocks that float before the eye. By displacing functions and provoking other arrangements, Túlio Pinto's works shave the surface of appearances and introduce doubts and uncertainties in the place of linear thinking.
About the artist
Túlio Pinto (Brasília, 1974) has a degree in Visual Arts with an emphasis in sculpture from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, 2009). He lives and works in Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. Among his exhibitions, the following stand out: “13th Mercosul Biennial: Trauma, Dream, Escape” (Porto Alegre, 2022); “Divergent Encounters” (Museum of Contemporary Art of Sorocaba, Sorocaba, 2021); “Glass and Concrete” (Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany, 2020); “Momentum” (MARGS – Museu de Arte do the Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2019); “Onloaded: Túlio Pinto” (Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art – phICA, Phoenix, Arizona/USA, 2015); “Vancouver Biennial” (Vancouver, Canada, 2014); “About Territories, Abisms and Intentions” (Projeto RS Contemporâneo – Santander Cultural Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, 2013); “CEP: Body, Space and Path” (9th Funarte National Network, 2013); “Salvaje – Digesting Europe Piece by Piece” (Traneudstillingen Exhibition Space, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012); “Transposition” (Galeria Augusto Meyer – Casa de Cultura Mário Quintana, Porto Alegre, 2012); “New Brazilian Sculpture” (Caixa Cultural Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2011); among others. His work is part of national and international collections, including Usina de Arte, Pernambuco; Figueiredo Ferraz Institute, Ribeirão Preto; Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná, Curitiba; Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre; MARGS – Museum of Art of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre; National Museum of Brasilia; Museum of Art of Ribeirão Preto; Pablo Atchugarry Foundation, Uruguay; Maria Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation, Madrid, Spain; Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany; Piramidón, Center d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain. In recent years he has held artist residencies in countries such as Ukraine, Canada, Portugal, the USA, the UK, and Holland.
