South likes: Ricardo Alcaide at Baró Galeria, Saõ Paulo

South likes: Ricardo Alcaide at Baró Galeria, Saõ Paulo
Settlements
Baró Galeria, Saõ Paulo, Brazil
5 April – 7 June, 2014

The Venezuelan artist Ricardo Alcaide took possession of the space of Baró gallery with settlements of objects—hence the title of the show—in order to question the precariousness of metropolises in relation to the notion of chaos and uncontrolled progress. Born in Caracas and currently living in Saõ Paulo, Alcaide reflects on the issues that relate the different architectural registers coexisting in metropolitan environments. The leftovers and the waste produced by metropolitan society are used by Alcaide to inquire the status of Latin American political and cultural references. The contradictions embedded in the metropolitan context of Saõ Paulo, from the glorious modernist tradition to the widespread episodes of DIY architecture, interfere on the socio-political background. The objects disseminated around the space colonise the floor and a line of grey metal shelves. The latter, which work as a rationalist remainder, are confronted in their unadorned appearance by the irreverence of series of objectual puns. The artist tidily arranged on some tables a series of pictures of modernist architectures, which interacts with objects or shapes, somehow measuring or questioning their formal rigour. With southern sensitivity, Alcaide conveys the anxiety that emerge from the pictorial and sculptural qualities of these works: indeed a very sharp commentary on the circumstances resulting from political and economic developments of the Latin American continent.

Michelangelo Corsaro

http://barogaleria.com/exhibition/ricardo-alcaide-settlements/