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For the third intervention in arte_passagem, the artist Matheus Chiaratti uses his research on works from Surrealism and their reverberations in the Brazilian poetic-literary production of Roberto Piva and Claudio Willer, as a proposal for a journey in the center of São Paulo that unites literature, chance, and the city.

 

In the display case of arte_passagem, a led panel shows verses that are based on entries from an ordinary hotel advertisement, but without clear guidelines or data. At the end, the message invites the viewer to go to the corner of Sete de Abril Street with Marconi and Bráulio Gomes Streets, where a great relief of the apocalyptic figure of St, Marks's lion awaits. There, right at the crossroads, a flyer being handed out dictates new directions for the route, urging the participant to go to the statue of Dante Alighieri at the end of Don José Gaspar Square.

 

The display case also has a painting, working in composition with the led panel. The charcoal drawing forms an enigmatic image, transcribed by the artist from a casual encounter with that same drawing on a wooden board found in the surroundings. This drawing is then replicated both in the painting and in panels of different sizes and colors that are arranged and replaced weekly at points close to the display case.

 

Coincidentally, this drawing is also very similar to the surrealist drawings of the character Nadja, from the homonym work by André Breton. The novel narrates passages of the two in an errand through Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, through coincidences and foresights in labyrinthine paths punctuated by love, esoterism and “convulsive BEAUTY”, coining the term Objective Chance, associated with the surrealists and used by Piva and Willer as a motto for the city's relation to poetic creation.

 

To trace a path, even though short and restricted to a single city-block, allows hidden and hitherto invisible elements to become noticeable for an inattentive passer-by, creating a path whose attention and availability recover for the viewer the strange discovery of powerful elements that only the city can offer.

 

For the opening of the intervention, the poet and exponent of the marginal generation of the 1960s, Claudio Willer (São Paulo, 1940), will give a free class on Objective Chance at Livraria Tapera Taperá; it is also worth mentioning that the Hotel Sphinx survey developed into a public petition with the Department of Historical Heritage (DPH), of the City of São Paulo, for the installation of a commemorative plaque to Breton and Roberto Piva on Avenida Rio Branco, in honor of a chance experience on September 27, 1966 (the same day of the opening of Hotel Sphinx), recounted in interviews and in the documentary Uma Outra Cidade, 2000, by Ugo Giorgetti, available on Youtube.

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INFO

Hotel Esfinge - Sphinx Hotel

Opening: 27 September 2018, 6pm

Until October 20th

arte_passagem | Rua Sete de Abril, 127, São Paulo