In Sunday in the park, the radical nature of the artist’s work Renata Lucas is evident in the comparison not only with the scale of the three exhibition rooms of the museum, but also the façade and the square in front of the Pina Estação building, located in Largo General Osório.

On the facade of the building, a large sign displays the phrase “There is no fair tomorrow”, an excerpt from the song by Gilberto Gil, which can only be read entirely from the square.

The second action of the exhibition consists of tracing and cutting a circle with a radius of 6,4 meters in Largo General Osório, as if it were possible to twist part of the square in an anticlockwise direction, intertwining the sidewalk and the garden. The work is also a reinterpretation of the Ferris wheel that Gil mentions in the song.

In the exhibition, the amusement park in Gil's song is mirrored in the aforementioned square, which symbolically reappears in the first exhibition room. In reference to the work Horse head and tail (2010), presented at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Renata Lucas promotes a metaphorical connection between the inside and the outside through a rotating platform. By pushing the wall of the platform, the audience makes part of the floor rotate, revealing a grassy area above it, similar to the ground at Largo General Osório.

The central room of the exhibition is divided between two projects. In the loser (2022), a pool table has been modified: its pockets have been replaced by pipes that lead the game balls to gutters embedded in the ground, until they disappear. On the ground floor of the mutheir, the balls reappear, expelled from time to time through holes in the wall. In [] (2014), exhibition panels were converted into mobile devices. As the public manipulates them, they end up activating discs embedded in the floor, which reproduce some excerpts from the song Domingo no parque, by Gilberto Gil.

In the last gallery, the public can experience one of Lucas's best-known works, Failure (2003). Here, plywood sheets, joined by hinges, cover the entire floor of the room. Using handles, the visitor moves them, experiencing the sensation of folding and unfolding the floor, temporarily reconfiguring the space.

From the perspective of a love tragedy, the song Amanhã não tem feira by Gilberto Gil tells the story of a betrayed man who commits a double murder, set in an amusement park. The song, composed in 1967, in the context of the civil-military dictatorship, becomes a key to reflecting on larger social conflicts, expressed in the contradictory reality of large cities like São Paulo.

Renata Lucas (Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, 1971). Visual artist. Her repertoire of works focuses on proposing temporary interventions in pre-existing environments, with the aim of raising questions and reflecting on the way in which urban and architectural spaces determine social behavior. The works are created by breaking the patterns and structures of environments to offer alternative perspectives and paths to those who encounter her work.

(The exhibition is curated by Pollyana Quintella)