Casa Triângulo is pleased to present, from May 20th, 2017, the first solo exhibition by Chilean artist based in New York Felipe Mujica in Brazil. The title of the show, Sombras Imaginarias vienem por el Camino Imaginario, borrows an excerpt from the poem "El Hombre Imaginario" by Chilean poet and mathematician Nicanor Parra - self-described "anti-poet" - presenting a set of new curtains, a large wall installation created with screenprints and an artist's book about his collaborative sculptural actions.
The Curtains presented are a development of Mujica’s project exhibited at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial in 2016. The fabric panels are displayed in the form of mobile and interactive installations, created in partnership with the group Bordadeiras do Jardim Conceição - formed by about forty residents of the neighborhood in the city of Osasco. Also called flags and banners, the works carry expectations and political discussions by the way they are created and by the use of techniques which are closer to domestic and craft work than works created with academic techniques. For the artist, actions like cutting, folding, sewing and embroidering fabrics are humble acts of resistance. The panels are based on drawings inspired by geometric abstraction and its History and transformation, from its foundations in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century, until its development into artistic movements in Latin America, with formal, social and political possibilities. These drawings are also inspired by visual creations of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, adding another possible layer of associations to the work. Hanging from the ceiling, Mujica's curtains float and move, working as flexible functional architectures, space dividers and temporary walls that channel the public’s perception into space and movement.
A large wall installation is created with a series of screen prints of appropriated images. Political posters, psychedelic images, Japanese graphic designs and covers of science fiction publications from the 1950s to the 1970s are modified, reorganized and reprinted by the artist, whose main objective is the investigation of the symbolic culture and its social status - rules of organization, functionality and collective understanding. Images are united by a formal and universal visual language linked to the production systems of their time. Between the 1950s and 1970s, community, collective and feminist movements, experimental pedagogies and counterculture flourished throughout the world.
The exhibition is complemented by an artist's book entitled "Linea de Hormigas [Line of Ants]" composed of images from a series of homonymous sculptures, carried out between 2007 and 2015. Many of these works represented in the publication were made in collaboration with others who followed the instructions of the artist. Always using the same materials - wooden rods and insulation tape, the result is ephemeral sculptures with a modernist look. The book with 92 pages and 28 x 20 cm size, synthesizes the artist's experiences in bringing education and art closer together. The fundamental aspect of this method is the opening of the creation of the work of art and dialogue with other artists, with the public and communities.
Produced with different materials and techniques, their curtains, serigraphs and their sculptural pieces stitch personal knowledge formed by different repertoires and experiences, united as complementary sides of the same reality: collective creative work.