renato bezerra de mello

RENATO BEZERRA DE MELLO
M a y 2 1 st - J u n e 2 5 th, 2 0 0 5
L E
S H O W R O O M
6, rue de Braque 75003 Paris
THE ARTIST
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SELECTION OF ART WORKS
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RESUME
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CONTACT INFORMATIONS
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Renato Bezerra de Mello explores individual
mythologies, like a poetical investigation of real and
imaginary memories.
The artist collects words, images and objects. He
manipulates them so as to appropriate them better.
Like a memory maker, he seizes key moments that
lead to a story, his story, his family's, the Brazilian
society's history. Refusing to become a pale image, he
fills his works with reminiscences, weaves a fictitious
memory where dream and reality mingle. He creates
imaginary diaries finding their source in buried secrets
of his family intimacy, without ever trying to make or
remake history.
His works rest on the desire to show without showing,
to say without saying. He establishes a play on
secrets, considering the evidences are forgotten too
soon. He offers to the viewer clues to decipher his
signs and messages but leaves him actor of the work's
meaning.
Thus, each of his works echoes the viewer's own
experience, playing on the confrontation between
personal memory and collective conscience. Renato
Bezerra de Mello is also sensitive to the question of
Brazil's memory. While working on his reminiscences,
he tries to urge his country to restore hidden sides of
its history.
His works are tied the one to the other, each arising
from the previous. Nothing is lost. He exploits scraps
from his earlier pieces, nourishing an intentional link, a
common thread.
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BERÇO ESPLENDIDO, 2004
Embroidery of red thread on a linen pillowcase. 60 x 60 cm.
On a pillowcase, Renato Bezerra de Mello embroidered with a red thread the waterways that run across South America without
respecting their orientation or the distances, as if he was drawing his own atlas, a love cartography confided in the bed's
warmth. Map of the continent's rivers or blood map of a loving heart that opens. The act of embroidering echoes those waiting
for their lovers who left to conquer the world, the heart tight and impatient, the heart crying.
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VISIONARIOS / VISIONARIES, 2002
Installation of 520 monocles (356 x 768 x 447 cm) hanging from the ceiling, with black and
white slides.
The spectator is invited to wander through a shower of red and blue monocles, " hanging like
a flight of birds ", and grab those within reach, stick an eye to it, thus discovering black and
white portraits gleaned by the artist in the family albums. Renato Bezerra de Mello has
recovered in Brazil those remains of an obsolete mode of representation, disappearing " little
objects of popular vision " offered by itinerant photographers on markets and fairs to those
unable to buy a camera. The artist replaced the images of Brazilian folklore by those of his
grandparents, like an open door to his family memory. He plays on surprise effects and urges
the viewer to become voyeur, peeping at his family's intimate secrets. He lets a feeling of
atemporality float, sending the spectator back to his own history. The monocles, as
memories, are more or less accessible, some close, others further. The work finds its
meaning in the presence of absence, between showing and hiding, remembering and
forgetting. The pictures chosen are the last marks of a lost era, remains of a great family of
Recife, sociological documents presented in makeshift cases. Thus Renato Bezerra de Mello
brings together two realities, a privileged family from Pernambuco and a trivial object of
popular daily life.
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SOU PAI E AMIGO / I AM FATHER AND FRIEND, 2004
Installation of 280 sheets of carbon paper hanged on the wall. Soundtrack.
Renato Bezerra de Mello received from his father, like a treasure to cherish, the correspondence his father wrote to his
grandfather during his stay in the United States in the 40's. The artist decides to retranscribe these letters on sheets of carbon
paper with an old type-writer found in a Parisian flea-market. He intends the pages for his sisters, handing over piece by piece
the family story. The carbon paper and the type-writer are both objects fallen into disuse, giving to the work a taste of nostalgia.
Nostalgia for a time that no longer is, but above all nostalgia for a trip in which he did not take part, for a complicity between
father and son he does not share. He interferes in the lines of a life he did not live, as if he was following an itinerary he will
never take. The carbon paper, fragile, suffers the violence of the keys that pierce it from time to time, rendering the reading
chaotic, eroding the fluidity of the writing. The words disappear to reappear better, like a play between legible and illegible. The
spectator cannot satisfy his curiosity entirely, voyeuristic desire to penetrate in someone else's intimacy. He must choose
between the frustration of not being able to decipher the sentences and the impulse of adding his own meaning, inventing a
story. The installation comes with a soundtrack taking up the last sentence of the letters, " I am father and friend ". It is built as
a variation on the same theme, " I am father and friend ; I am father and accomplice ; I am father and… ".
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DESLOCAMENTOS / DISPLACEMENTS, 2004
Installation of 2000 sheets of cristal paper hanging from the ceiling. Soundtrack.
Deslocamentos is a vault of crystal sheets covered with imaginary shores and rivers, like the pages from an atlas of another
world. The sheets of paper are hanging like tight banderols echoing the banners in Brazilian popular festivals. This work arises
from Sou Pai e Amigo. The artist draws fantasized territories from memories borrowed to the correspondence between his
father and his grandfather, thus creating the diary of a journey he will never go on, like a dream of paper. The spectator is invited
to raise his eyes and take hold of pieces of territories, stretch his arm and let his hand run between the sheets, thus making
arise the sound of the murmuring sea also broadcasted by a soundtrack.
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CORREIO AMOROSO / LOVE MAIL, 2003
Installation of 52 squares of embroidered linen on hangers. Soundtrack.
The visitor is invited to wander between the squares of embroidered linen as in the
pages of a diary, and thus, discover the artist's imaginary museum. The drawings
echo his repertoire of images nourished by the remnants of the daily, the Brazilian
memory and his personal universe: images as so many love words embroidered by
the artist in the secrecy of his studio. Renato Bezerra de Mello unveils and hands
over, in a shameless gesture, his " love mail ". The title of the work echoes the love
letters passed on by homing pigeons, the installation being conceived for the Abbaye
du Bon Repos where stands an old dovecot. It comes with a soundtrack broadcasting
sounds and whispers from nature and snatches of conversations, reinforcing the
secret and intimate atmosphere violated by the presence of the spectator.
CICATRIZ / SCAR, 2004
Tarlatan and threads. 10 x 400 cm
Cicatriz is an extension of Love Mail. It is made with scraps of red thread sewn end
to end on a tarlatan strip, thus creating a continuous and endless line, like the
indelible trace of a love wound. The diaphanous fabric evokes the fragility of the skin
marked with an open scar.
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ESTRELAS DALVAS, 2003
White gowns embroidered with red thread.
Renato Bezerra de Mello chants the name of those woman too often forgotten who, from generation
in generation, have worked for his family. " Estrela Dalva ", the lucky star, represents the one who
takes care of others' well-being. Nilza, Dona Nena, Zétinha, as many names embroidered on a gown,
as a tribute to those who shared the family intimacy, a final gesture of remembrance.
AUTOPORTRAIT IMAGINAIRE / IMAGINARY SELFPORTRAIT, 2004
Video made from an argentic negative on a broken glass. Digitalized and worked-on negative.
The Imaginary Selfportrait arises from the picture of a relative, the oldest one the artist could find in
the family albums. Renato Bezerra de Mella sets down the face of his forebear as the original point,
the one of a face - his - and of a story - his family's. The image unfolds slowly, so slowly the movement
is imperceptible, letting believe in a still and fractured picture; the face can never be seen completely.
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RENATO BEZERRA DE MELLO
Born in 1960 in Recife, Brazil.
Lives and works in Rio
BACKGROUND
2002
Mario et Marisa Merz's assistant for the preparation of their exhibition at Marian Goodman
Gallery, Paris.
2001
Cildo Meireles's assistant for the preparation of the exhibition Da Adversidade Vivemos at
the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris.
2001 - 2004
Annette Messager's studio assistant.
2000
2000
1993 - 1997
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Studio of Annette Messager, Paris
Quits architecture to dedicate himself to art. Arrives in Paris.
Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Studio of Iole de Freitas, Nelson Leirner, Kate von
Scherpenberg and Joao Magalhaes, Rio de Janeiro.
Universidade Catolica, specialization in Brazilian art and architecture, Rio de Janeiro.
Universidade Federal de Permanbuco, Master's degree in Architecture, Recife.
1985 - 1986
1979 - 1983
EXHIBITIONS
2004
Trajetórias 2004, curated by the Institute of Culture, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife
Memorias Heterogêneas, curated by Marcelo Campos, Castelinho do Flamengo Cultural
Center, Rio de Janeiro
L'Altro Intretejido, curated by Yves Sabourin, Musée Ethnographique et Folklorique, La Paz,
Bolivie.
2003
Murmures, curated by Olivier Castaing, First Biennale of Contemporary Art, Abbaye de Bon
Repos, Saint Gelven.
2002
Artissima 9, Rabouan Moussion Gallery, Turin
Première Vue, curated by Michel Nuridsany, Passage de Retz, Paris
2000
Portes Ouvertes, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris
1999
Grupo 14, curated by Joao Magalhaes, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro
1997
Nova Pintura, Galeria Barra Shopping, Rio de Janeiro
Projeto Universid'Arte IV, Instituto de Arte e Cultura, Universidade Estacio de Sa, Rio de Janeiro
1996
Vertentes, Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim, curated by Joao Magalhaes, Rio de Janeiro
Projeto Universid'Arte I, Instituto de Arte e Cultura, Universidad Estacio de Sa, Rio de Janeiro.
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INFORMATIONS PRATIQUES
Le Showroom
6 rue de Braque, 75003, Paris.
leshowroom@corpoarte.com
Openig hours : from Tuesday to Saturday, from 02.00 pm to 07.00 pm
www.le-showroom.com
Gabriella Pessoa de Queiroz
Tel +33 6 64 12 16 77 e-mail gabriella@corpoarte.com
Laure Phélip
Fax +33 1 44 54 04 74 e-mail laure@corpoarte.com
Dorothée Tramoni
Tel +33 6 16 67 94 36 e-mail dorothee@corpoarte.com
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