Health insurance and a paid-off house, Thiago Bortolozzo and Thiago Honório
One of the challenges of describing the exhibition “Plano de Saúde e Casa Própria” (Health Insurance and a Paid-Off House), by Thiago Bortolozzo and Thiago Honório, is the ambivalent character of the artworks. On the one hand, they stand alone, are unique, and articulate meanings in the internal relationship between the elements that comprise them. But these objects abandon introspection and try to also act upon the shared space, presenting themselves as a continuation thereof. To do so, they establish correspondences with one another and attempt to compose the space, as though they were giving the gallery a new look.
The way the exhibit is set up highlights the dialogue between the artworks. The individual character of each of them is lessened. They cease to act within their own physical boundaries and seek to communicate with the space that permeates them. They suggest more evident connections with the place and look to attribute meanings to it. The photos, for instance, have individuality, yet seem to comment and attribute meaning to the gallery’s functions. Looking at them, we get the feeling that we are in a suggestive real estate showroom featuring inhabited and imbalanced buildings.
As imbalanced, by the way, as the connection between the black oil bar marks and the sheets of silver that curl up within those lines. In a larger drawing, a wide black spot split into two juxtaposed sheets of paper conveys a sense of a weight greater than the available walls in the exhibition room can hold. Here, the placement of these works within the space matters. Although each artwork speaks for itself, they relate to each other and try to establish a new relationship with the space of the recently opened gallery.
The artists intend to open up the space by arousing everything into wakefulness. They are especially bothered by the decorous serenity of commercial art venues. Their shop window-, supermarket gondola-like look. As for the individual works, these artists have problems conforming to stable situations. Streetwise, they are not keen on punching the clock, having a set lunchtime, much less on repetitive chores. They only attain harmony and comfort in the eye of the tornado. They try to arrange the elements in their work once everything is on the verge of falling apart.
Precarious balances
This is maybe why the work of these artists seems to be made of precarious balances. The flattened-out buildings in the photos and the heavy, massy forms in the drawings struggle to stand up. Whether it be because one of them lacks solidness, or the other has too much mass. In their more spatial works, the artists look to displace the fixed load-bearing points. In his Vital Brasil (2001) series, Bortolozzo would at times pile up plywood crates in the corner of a room, as though the room were propped up against that fragile, precarious structure. The supports were fragile and seemed to take away the solidity of the place. One got the sense that the room had a hard time keeping upright.
The photos in this exhibition also deal with these delicate supports. In photographing building façades, the artists try to flatten everything up. The images seem shallow, devoid of solidness. The massive skyscraper loses its edges and any sign of depth. At most, faces of the same building are alternated between, juxtaposing surfaces. The cropping of the photos, from a top-down perspective, eliminates the presence of the street, of the passersby, and any reference to horizontality, to the floor. We get the sense that those strips of concrete stand on a precarious abutment. Just like the rooms that the sculptures titled Vital Brasil were in, here, we get the impression of flimsy support. The photographic eye decouples the verticality of the buildings from conventional spatiality. The planes seem about to crumble thunderously, yet an array of provisional buttresses postpones the risk of collapse.
The shapes in the drawings are also precariously balanced. However, it is not the lack of abutment nor the aged, standoffish look of the surfaces that lead to an imbalanced relationship with the elements. Here, the shapes are heavy, massy, softened, and clumsy. They do not have the straight-line look that walls do. They are porous bodies that seem to come apart. However, they want to stay upright, like stubborn drunks. They are generally accompanied, and they prop themselves against other shapes, creating unstable relationships. Whereas in the photos, the risk of things falling apart drives the artists to build a perspective in which the surfaces (which seem to softly touch one another seeking a point of equilibrium), here, the vertigo stems from the excess vigor of the forms. One seems to exert strength upon the other. No part of the artwork compromises on their characteristics, nor does it wish to serve as abutment.
Harmony without respite
In the past, Honório’s work featured a balance between soft, thin lines, and massy forms. They propped themselves up against each other seeking a point of equilibrium. The lines avoided stretching too much, so as not to break. In turn, the dense, heavy stripes tried to keep attached to the more delicate lines, because they did not wish to become a horizontal blot.
In his best works, those vertical stains tried to keep from stretching out the thin lines, as that would imply an interrupted fall. Since the lines were soft, the artist prevented either form from tensing up the other one and sought a less violent relationship. The bodies moved around an axis as though they were dancing. They went from side to side with grace and delicateness. By all indications, if one form were to force the other, the balance would be broken, but thanks to this motion, they kept upright.
Harmony was not found with the elements at rest; on the contrary, they came to an understanding through great activity. Now, the co-authored forms struggle to stay in balance. The artists are not interested in having their elements rest. The kind of harmonization they seek is based on these poorly accommodated, somewhat provisional situations, as though it all were just about to settle down.
That is perhaps why the artists feel uncomfortable in such a welcoming, serene space as the art gallery. Everything seems too ideal. Maybe the artists prefer the promiscuous environs of the big cities in Brazil. In a way, the elements in this piece feed off unpredictability, off the need to improvise in the face of risk. They are not accustomed to reclining comfortably in one place.
Since they wish to extrapolate these not-too-stable relationships, the artists attempt to contravene, at all times, the spectator’s indifference towards the exhibition space. To this end, right at the entrance, they install a uniform group of iron sheets that cover up the gallery’s glass façade. The metal sheets restrict the entry of sunlight into the venue and prevent contact with the outside space. At first, we get the impression that the building has been abandoned, as some of the photos in the exhibit suggest, and shut down with a solid sheet of iron. The arrangement, however, is more interesting than that. In fact, the artists use the sheets to dislocate the gallery space.
The entrance no longer identifies with the vitreous front end of the room. It gets moved out to the side, in a gap between the sheets and the venue’s door. To get in, we go underneath the iron sheet, which tilts our way. Although the sheets are lightly abutted, here, the sense of imbalance is imminent, not least because whoever walks underneath the metal sheets can see their smooth surfaces. For all intents and purposes, we walk under a big, heavy iron sheet. Although the welding lines are exposed, one gets the impression that this heavy plane is balanced above us and could collapse at any minute.
It is important to note the side the artists choose when inserting the sheets into the space. They prefer to have the smooth side facing the inside of the gallery, and the welded side where the joints show facing outward. This is the outer part of the iron, and it enhances our sense of dislocation. We get the impression that the rear part of the gallery has shifted forward, highlighting the building’s isolation from the street.
Paid-off house health plan
This surface is a health plan. Through it, the artists manage to bring into the exhibition space the imminent risk that seems to constitute the other works. They believe that this rough-surface plane revives the space, breaking its monotony, imbuing it with health. Their appropriating the venue destabilizes this artwork-appropriate place, lending the instability within the artworks out to the place that they are inscribed in.
Although the two terms in the exhibition title are not taken in their more usual sense, it is curious how they seem to converse with said meaning. In Brazil, the paid-off house remains a social claim and a dream to many families. It is testimony to a country where basic rights are yet to become universal. Access to such creature comforts is often gained by force of exception. Private health plans, for instance, appear as a particular form of colonization of a region with insufficient public healthcare coverage.
Although the exhibit authored and conceived by the two artists is not about the ills of the country, it is curious how they turn this improvised, sly way of working around problems into plastic form. They deal in unstable, uncertain situations. Without ever extolling the experience of improvisation, they seem to look kindly on this plastic ability to revert adversities. And ultimately, once the storm has passed, these artists might be able to make the bar marquee into a fine abode after all.
— Tiago Mesquita
Exhibition text, “Plano de saúde e casa própria” (Health plan and a paid-off house). São Paulo: Galeria Rosa Barbosa, October 2003.
Translate by Gabriel Blum