Casa Triângulo is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by Ascânio MMM at the gallery, curated by and text by Guilherme Wisnik.

The spatial pieces by Ascânio MMM have a public bent, springing from their basic link with the constructivist tradition and, more specifically, a proximity with architecture and with the notion of structure. For this reason many of his works have been installed in open spaces, outside galleries or museums. In the case of this exhibition, the pyramidal typology, referring to historical totemic forms, is combined with a new, more open and abstract work (Quasos/Prisma 1), whose scale allows people to penetrate its interior space and cross through it. Its diaphanous consistency denotes an intense dialogue with modern architecture, for which the dilution of borders between inside and outside is essential in the construction of a continuous spatiality. And, not by chance, the volume of the piece gets thinner until delicately touching the ground, to float in space, as in the serial porticos of MAM in Rio de Janeiro, by Affonso Eduardo Reidy.

Depending on the angle from which we look at Ascânio’s spatial pieces, Quasos and Piramidais, they assume more solid or more hollow aspects, due to the depth of the profiles used. Also with the light curtains made of aluminum modules and screws (Quacors) something similar takes place: their distances in relation to the wall cause changing shadows, and the halo of color that is produced based on the paintings on the lateral faces of the modules create subtly fleeting environments, which vary according to the spectator’s point of view. That is: in both cases there is a dialectic relationship between the universality of their constructive matrix and the contingent datum that each person’s experience establishes with the works and the surrounding environment.

All the pieces are constructed according to clear principles (modular profiles, identical screws and junctions), but our perceptions of them are ambiguous. This is a crucial question of Ascânio’s work: the idealness of the form is tempered by the contingent nature of the perception. This is what makes it oscillate between the rigid fixations of the smaller pieces, made to ensure the stability of the form and volume on a large scale, and the flexible joints of the curtains and meshes, in which the amount of play between the screws and profiles allows for a certain fluidity in the fit, dynamizing the rigor of the structures and lending a certain organicity to the geometry that brings them closer to life. In the interplay of ambiguity between the bidimensional and the tridimensional produced by these Quacors, an extraordianry ambience is created. A clear “will for form.” Open to the variable in determinations of life.