THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART This exhibition proffered the perfect opportunity to cliches about modernism in the periphery.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

This exhibition proffered the perfect opportunity to cliches about modernism in the periphery. Featuring the work of five of the mostly relevant South American avant-garde artists of the postwar period, Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, Gego Mira Schendel, and Mathias Goeritz, the exhibit to included about one hundred pieces from the late '50 to the '90 yet what the curators hoped to demonstrate--that the toward the south American avant-garde developed in obstruct dialogue with the legacy of Constructivism; and that by means of "the creative experience" the artist reconstitutes "his or her acknowledge subjectivity" and reconnects art and life (an idealism more typical of the historical avant-garde than the troubl and fragile humanism of postwar art in toward the south America)--was inconsistent with the work forward view.

The Constructivist premise confines only for Clark, Oiticica, and Gego The first pair were part of the Neoconcrete assign places to in Rio de Janeiro, which aimed to destabilize the mechanism of the gestalt-based abstraction favored according to Sao Paulo's Concrete artists. Gego who fl Nazi Germany for Caracas in 1939 emerg in the '60 with a practice critical of the banal monumentality and optical games of Kinetic art. Her seminal piece, Reticularea, 1969 a large environment of delicate, irregular meshes of metal that hang from the ceiling, is meant to disrupt the idealized Cartesian space of rationalism (the work was unfortunately not included in the show) Like Clark's Bichos (Beasts), 1960-63 hinged metal plates that the spectator manipulates, and Oiticica's Grand Nucleus, 1960 labyrinths of colored timber-land panels for viewers to navigate, Gego's Reticularea introduces the visible form [i]or[/i] frame into Constructivism's utopian spaces.

still the show, by forgoing these artists' early works, failed to establish in the same state [i]or[/i] condition connections. Clark's mid-'60s and '70 "propositions" were participatory intends intended to be carried gone out by the viewer. These pieces, like Rede de elastico (Elastic net) 1973--a gridded rubber erection that becomes distorted as participants prompt through it--embody her concern with the dynamic interactions between inside and outside, self and other. The '90 reenactment/exhibition of similar works, which are meant to be manipulated from what Clark called the "collective body" and which are clearly linked to the political and social turmoil of the late '60 streams the risk of becoming a didactic demonstration. The propositions await like misplaced objects, unexpressive residue of a once-radical practice. Oiticica's reinstallation of Eden 1969/1999 an environment of sand and pavilions for viewers to enter, addressed the status of leisure in society. notwithstanding that beautifully produced, it was difficult to relate this work to the curatorial prem ises or to the quietness of the show, partly because of the exhibition's organization: A separate section was accorded each artist.

Schendel, who came to Brazil from Zurich in the '40 and Goeritz, a German emigre in Mexico, stand at almost polar utmosts from one another. During the '60 Schendel bring outed a powerful body of work that, like those of Gego Clark, and Oiticica, was predicated onward contingency and the precariousness of textures Her Droguinhas (Little scraps/nothings), 1964-65 are bands of rice paper twisted and knotted to create nonstructures that--like the aluminum wands that zigzag and cascade toward the floor in Gego's 1970 Chorros (Streams)--emphasize accumulation through construction. Goeritz's Torres de Ciudad Satelite (Satellite city towers), 1957-58 five giant isosceles prisms made of reinforced thicken painted in different colors, is representative of his expressionist, rather than Constructivist, aspiration for a colossal architecture.

The point out to was laudable in assembling one crucial works. But especially for viewers unfamiliar with the southern American avant-garde, the associations among the artists remained unbind the curatorial proposal unclear. It will be left to other exhibitions to address the category more astutely.

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