From the editing room to the dissecting table: a transverse section of Thiago Honório’s work
The latest piece of work by the artist Thiago Honório, “Documents” (2012), created during the Faap artist residency program at Cité des Arts, in Paris, is composed of a collection of sharp objects dating from the 18th to the 21st century. Picked up at markets, thrift fairs, and garage sales in the French capital, the items are calculatedly lined up on a table to create surgically precise designs. Acquired by the collector Roberta Matarazzo and donated to MAC USP in February, the installation “Documents” (pictured) is featured in the exhibit “O Agora, o Antes” (The Now, the Before) ending October 27.
By exhibiting a collection of 45 cutting tools, Thiago Honório reaffirms his impetus to speculate on the poetics of cutting, editing, and montage. The installation has the merit of transversally approaching a question that has been dear to the artist ever since his video and film projects, ten years ago. In “Documents,” the objects are at the reach of the spectator’s hand, just like in a dissecting table, with no domes or displays. The availability factor puts the artwork in the position of challenging – subtly and delicately – the security standards of a museum. In this sense, Honório establishes an interesting dialogue with the attitude of Lucio Fontana, whose “Conceito Espacial” (Spatial Concept, 1965) is featured in the same exhibit. In order to find something else than the two-dimensionality of painting, Fontana tore up and punched holes in his paintings. “Creating these cuts in the history of preestablished art is precisely the purpose of the exhibition,” says the curator Tadeu Chiarelli.
Besides the question of security, the piercing objects also emphasize work processes, more so than results. “For some time now, I had been meaning to create a piece of work that would question – in all its process- and performance-related aspects – the layers to the notion of ‘work’ and the term ‘artwork,’” says Thiago Honório.
— Paula Alzugaray
São Paulo: Istoé, June 7, 2013.
Translated by Gabriel Blum