Geraldo de Barros and Denis Jutzeler, Maîtriser l’extrême
Opening on March 10th 2015 from 6pm
Exhibition from March 11th to May 15th, 2015
YOU LOOK AT THE SUN. THEN YOU RETURN HOME AND YOU CAN'T WORK, YOU'RE IMPREGNATE WITH ALL THAT LIGHT Jonas Mekas[1]
For this exhibition proposal I use my intuition to bring together two artists, active in different fields of visual arts, who used or use their skills for thinking photography as tool for making art and a means of expression, building panoramas of the unconscious with " extreme expertise".
My proximity to one of the artists, Geraldo de Barros, who happens to be my father, is one of the features of this proposal. The dialogue between his work, developed with the maturity necessary to sustain a rigorous artistic career of over 50 years, and that of the artist Denis Jutzeler, whose work is at present, is a challenging form that question myself as an artist who has a passion for photography.
Denis Jutzeler is a Swiss artist, born in 1956, who works with photography and film.
Formed by the renowned Vevey Photography School, Denis closely combines a constant and personal practice of photography and a movie cameraman career initiated in the 90’s. Collaborator, among others, of the filmmaker Alain Tanner, he is regularly rewarded for the singularity of his camera in documentaries or fiction movies. In 2014 he obtained the Quartz for Best Photography of Swiss cinema.
While working in film projects, Denis assiduously continued his personal photographic work and, in 2010, he obtained the Swiss Photo Award.
Geraldo de Barros, a Brazilian artist, 1923/1998, during his life explored different fields of art, from painting to drawing and printmaking, graphic arts, furniture design and photography. These experiences led him to extremes in different mediums he used, from an Expressionist painting influenced by his graduate years in São Paulo to the postwar radical geometrism of Concrete painting, when Grupo Ruptura was created, in 1952.
These years also coincide with Barros’ discovery of photography as a cerebral act, starting with a pattern, he completely deconstructed the image to transpose and re-work it on the negative image. He draws on the film, with a dry-tip or in ink, recreating the patterns encountered or extending them into a new scene. He is nowadays internationally recognized as the photographer of the light and the pioneer of abstract photography in Brazil.
Insatiable in exploration that allows him these techniques freely learned, between 1954 and 1982 he transposes his knowledge of drawing, art theory and philosophy to the industrial field. Influenced by Gestalt, Bauhaus and Walter Benjamin, he designed and produced furniture, creating, in 1954, Unilabor, a unique experience of an active working community that lasted until the military coup of 1964, followed by Hobjeto, a furniture industry with a style widespread in Brazil until the 80's.
Fascinated by the idea that a chair should be a work of art "for all", Hobjeto factory becomes a huge laboratory design with over 700 collaborators, allowing Geraldo to combine form and function by creating Formica paintings-objects.
Throughout its life, Geraldo used different art media to question their specifications, from painting to photography, from multiple furniture to intimate engraving. In1996 he started working in a new series of photographs entitled Sobras. He interrupts his trajectory by returning to negative images, that he cuts and starts this series that confirms his move from modern towards contemporary.
Denis and Geraldo are both professionals who highly consider their parallel activities - the cinema for Denis, the furniture design for Geraldo - as "dietary artistic and professional activities" to allow them full freedom of artistic expression as well as the use of photography as such.
To obtain this freedom does not depend on a statement or posture. For these artists, it is intimately linked to their professionali activity; it is almost a consequence. We witness the mastery they show to explore to extremes the mediums they chose. It is not the rejection of a system, it is the artistic response that reflects their passion for freedom of action.
With Sobras Geraldo recovers mundane photographs produced throughout his life. We see the family, travels, birthdays. Landscapes without human figures or cut-out silhouettes revealing their absence. Cutting, trimming, the singularity of the photographic fragment, all involved in moving the images of an intimate archive to a universal narrative, they are freed of their individual and anedoctal characteristics.
Denis photographs are portraits of a nature that tries not to be noticed. Banal looming, almost reassuring, if there weren’t traces of the artist, where the certificate of normalcy is shaken by a strong desire to be re-built.
There is vertigo in these woods and their interlacing branches. It comes from Denis’ ability to make us doubt the limits of photography. The editing digital touch, intuitive and without moral taboo dialogue with the way Geraldo discovered photography when he produced his Fotoformas series, starting in 1946.
The two artists recreate images that refuse naturalism. With Sobras Geraldo takes on a negative image, often using color and sometimes they were not made by himself, creating with a black and white enlarging a new way to (be) seen.
Denis intervenes in the multiplication of layers on his digital images, enlarging or distorting them to obtain the desired degree for his exact landscape. Between the two artists, the same freedom for two different approaches, separated by a "before" and "after" Photoshop.
With the extremes of their parallel practices, both artists are building forms recognizable and identifiable. They are questioning us even more towards this identification, mainly if there is detour related to their work. With this mastery of a simple technique, because it is ally to a freedom of expression, these images remind us of a collective unconscious, a projection towards another reality that photography makes us want to believe.
Fabiana de Barros
Geraldo de Barros - Sobras em Obras
Film by Michel Favre
As part of the exhibition Maîtriser l’extrême, we invite you to see the film by Michel Favre "Geraldo de Barros - Sobras em Obras" (75 minutes - 1999 - HD), Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 7:30 p.m., Salle de Fonction: Cinéma, on Grütli’s ground floor, rue du Général-Dufour 16, Geneva. In the presence of the director and the curator Fabiana de Barros.
[1] Phrase extraite du film « Walden » de Jonas Mekas, 1969, éditée sous forme de photographie en 2005 dans la série « Frozen Film Frames ».