H É Lio Oiticica: This Is An Era When Everyone Can Participate In Art Creation

H é Lio Oiticica, a representative of Brazilian avant-garde art in the 20th century, presented his first solo exhibition "ho in motion" at the Shanghai space of the riesson gallery. The exhibition will last until October 30.

H é Lio Oiticica (1937-1980) has deeply influenced the development of contemporary art since 1960s. He has become an outstanding representative of the creativity and discourse power of a generation of artists and a pioneer of interactive art. H é Lio's early works were mainly geometric painting and sketching, but soon he began to explore architectural installation, film, writing, sculpture and large-scale immersive environmental art. Through various forms of artistic expression, he always focuses on the study of "dynamic movement", and tries to fight against the boundary of traditional art, constantly challenging the independent and separate relationship between "art" and "audience" in the traditional concept.

Imperfect squares

H é Lio was born into a family of high-level intellectuals in Brazil. His father was a photographer and engineer. In 1954, with the transfer of his father's place of work, he moved back to his hometown of Rio de Janeiro from Washington, USA. together with his brother C é SAR, he studied art with the Neo concrete artist Ivan Serpa at the Museum of modern art in Rio de Janeiro. His teacher advocated that artistic creation is a way to get the experience of emancipating the mind. After a year as a teacher, H é Lio, less than 20 years old, began to draw Abstract gouache on cardboard. In the same year, he joined Grupo Frente, an artist group led by Ivan. The group was deeply influenced by European geometric abstraction at that time, and H é Lio, as a core member, became one of the most active figures in contemporary art in Rio.

The first part of H é Lio's first exhibition in China presents the metaesqema series he created during his life and work in Rio de Janeiro from 1957 to 1958. Although the whole series are static cardboard paintings, it is amazing to observe the geometric abstract large color blocks with strong contrast in the picture. These seemingly regular squares seem to be injected with special energy. They are shivering, crowding and impacting each other. The original static picture is instantly full of tension and motion. Through a large number of radical use of geometric figures and bright and strong colors, H é Lio broke the shackles of the European constructivist art of minimalism at that time, and at the same time, he added the unique avant-garde music rhythm and the rhythm and wave of Brazilian local poetry to his works.

Unlike Malevich's perfect square, appreciating the metaesquema series is like peeping into the microscopic world of atoms. Each geometric element interacts and interacts with each other in the gaps left blank. The two-dimensional plane suddenly produces a dynamic feeling as if in space. Art historian Roberto conduru commented in his article h é Lio Oiticica: the spread of art footprints "Every piece of work from the metaesquemas series is a microcosm, and its kinetic energy comes from the core of shapes, which interact with each other and interact with the space created by them. The purpose of activating the edge is to question the starting point and end point of art, which is also a question h é lio has been exploring in his works." in addition, he pointed out that: "Strictly speaking, metaesquema has no bottom, top or edge, and can be rotated arbitrarily. By relaxing the hierarchical division in the traditional western visual structure, it breaks the idea that art is a reflection of reality and an external object."

"Ho in motion" exhibition site. Leeson Gallery Shanghai Space

Avant garde artists dancing in slums

Just as the metaesquema series is neither painting nor drawing, the second important work presented in this exhibition, relevos espaciais, goes beyond canvas and sculpture. In the center of the Shanghai space of the ritsen Gallery, a seemingly static bright yellow installation art is hanging in the air. When the audience moves around the work, the change of sight leads to the dynamic changes in the shape and color of the work. The color of high saturation makes it very existential, as if it is an abstract plane figure born out of the series of metaesquema, which obtains the volume out of thin air and leaps into the air.

Since 1960, with H é Lio's ability to control seemingly simple geometric composition more perfect, he gradually moved away from graphic painting and tried to create several new works, including revelos espaciais, n ú CLEOs and penetr á Veis. Although the first two series of works still have the characteristics of two-dimensional space, they have largely reflected h é Lio's artistic aesthetic transformation in the early 1960s. Complete works of art need the participation of the audience to be activated, and the last series of works is his first strictly participatory work.

H é Lio grew up in a family of intellectuals who could not afford food and clothing. But what inspired him most in the end was the Brazilian slum, which was a mixture of poverty, chaos and bustling environment. Starting in 1964, he studied Brazilian slum culture across races and classes and attended the samba school there. In the slums, he dealt with many poor, illiterate black Brazilians, and accidentally found the raw materials for the "color expression of the surrounding space" he wanted, and began to create a series of wearable works, parangol é s. Most of these works are shawls and cloaks made of fabric, plastic, carpet mats and ropes, with flag patterns and text slogans to show the fusion of elegance and vulgarity. And the completion of the whole artwork still needs the dancer to wear it on the body and dance to give the work life and energy. In 1965, when h é Lio tried to perform with the Mangala dancers in the Cape, they were turned away. Finally, they moved their performances to an open square outside the museum to expose racism and inequality in Brazilian society.

The last work of this exhibition is helioframes, which h é Lio CO produced with Ivan Cardoso, a Brazilian filmmaker, in 1979. It was also a year before his early death. H é Lio creates geometric images directly on 35mm film, and then when projected, the space is echoed with sound and light images of red, green, blue, white and black, beating rhythmically. In order to push his aesthetic experiment to the extreme, he even further dematerialized the works of art and directly integrated color light into the environment to change people's body perception.

Michael wellen, curator of Tate Gallery, once commented on H é Lio: "he is challenging the limits of art and thinking about how art can liberate human beings." perhaps this is the highest evaluation an artist can receive. H é Lio once said that his goal was to give "a fatal blow to concepts like museums and galleries, and even the exhibition itself.". In his eyes, art is not "the pinnacle of aesthetics" worshipped in the high place all the time.

Recently, 21st century business reporter gave an exclusive interview to David Tung, director of ritsen Gallery in Shanghai, and asked him to share the ideas and significance of the art history of H é Lio's first exhibition in China.

"21st century": we have noticed that most of the works on display in "ho in motion" presented by lisson Gallery in Shanghai are paintings created by artists in the early stage, including a sculpture work and an experimental image work created later. What kind of curatorial ideas are these works exhibited together?

Dong Daozi: this exhibition aims to introduce h é Lio's various artistic practices by showing the core representative works in his career. These works vividly show the artist's concept of "dynamic movement", which is also the key theme in H é Lio's creation and artistic thought. His focus on "dynamic" and his infectious energy into simple geometric composition have been throughout his career. In short, this exhibition is a very rare opportunity to fully experience the artist's interest in the performance of "dynamic movement" and its development track. Every change is closely related to the next step.

21st century: we can feel the energy in H é Lio's works. How do you understand this energy?

Dong Daozi: before he was 20 years old, H é Lio was an important member of the art group Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro. In the late 1950's, he became the leader of Brazil's Neo concretism. Among his peers were many avant-garde artists, such as Lygia Clark, Lygia pape and poet Ferreira gullar. This group later launched the famous tropicalismo, which was also named after H é Lio's installation art of the same name in 1967, which represented the vicissitudes of Brazil through art, poetry and music. Most of H é Lio's most famous works emphasize the participation and performance of artistic creation. He often invites the audience to join his multi sensory environment, movies and paintings, so that they can actively participate in artistic creation freely.

H é Lio draws energy from his own life experience and constantly explores the subversion of traditional frame and sculpture concepts. Meanwhile, he imperceptibly integrates the cultural elements of his native Brazil, rhythm, rhyme and poetry into his works. Therefore, his creation is not only based on his personal experience, but also has a unique experimental and innovative nature.

21st century: Why did the ritsen Gallery choose to bring h é Lio's works to Chinese audiences?

Dong Daozi: H é Lio's works face the traditional boundaries of art, challenge the concept of "art is an object separated from the audience", actively encourages the audience to participate in art, and actively eliminates the boundary between art and life. This is an important touchstone for the discussion of art and curatorial practice, especially its close relationship with sociology.

H é Lio is one of the leading figures of Brazilian art in the 20th century. His works influenced the artists who lived after him for decades and triggered many contemporary art movements. We hope to introduce h é Lio's dynamic creative practice and legendary life to Chinese and Asian audiences, so as to highlight the historical similarities between the art history of different countries, enrich the artist's character stories and encourage the audience to further study his art practice.