The Colosso triad
Brotéria launched an exhibition called Colosso in November. It was split into three moments – um clarão, uma cratera, a viagem -, each with its own opening date and viewing (respectively from November 25 to December 12, from December 16 to December 30, from January 6 to January 20), with different layouts depending on the body of work on display.
The artist trio Rui Serra, SantoSilva and Tomás Maia have assembled a group show looking to merge materials, contexts, concepts and even authors at times. There is always an oscillating motion between dialogue and autonomy. Curating a single exhibition that cannot be viewed as a whole, but rather over time, generates a spatial fracture that both calls for a continuous viewing and reflection, but also forces each part to be cohesive.
For the first creation, um clarão, Antes (2023) by Tomás Maia is made up of an aligned trace of land. Rui Serra’s miniature models Para Pensar (2023) are projections of colossal buildings, complying with Maia’s dictum. In turn, SantoSilva disguises one of the gallery’s rooms with de maneira difusa (2023), a red fabric whose light behind it propagates an idea of gestation, incompleteness and a pledge for the future. For now, we are mostly left with the burnt beeswax candle perched on Rui Serra’s Gárgula (2022), which he labels do Bem e do Mal (2023). The artistic takeover of an initial work by Serra, accommodated to suit a proposal by SantoSilva, should be noted. This joint work, albeit labelled as two individual pieces, typifies authorial reflection during the exhibition making process itself. Our final clue from this first half: the work that will always be present, Blastogénese (2020) – a word defining a first embryonic form, following the egg’s fragmentation – consisting of an oval base out of which a head emerges.
In uma cratera, Tomás Maia grows his landline taller, now already a continuous work, but with no possibility of guessing what may come of it. Whilst Rui Serra is exhibiting a significant portion of his work (nine out of a total of sixteen), SantoSilva offers us the greatest revelation. He folds up his red fabric, still on display, and builds a first wax corridor, tirando as sandálias (2023), which, besides forming a path of fragile material, ends with no primeiro dia (2023), an installation that can be as much an altar as a tomb. Whatever the case, the sacralisation of the venue, the low light between black walls, on a cracked and crumbling floor, provides the first symbolic elements with institutional religious overtones within a cultural site that defines itself as a Jesuit house of culture.
The third part of Colosso – a viagem, now on display, unveils the final part of Maia’s creation, in which Antes (2023) is converted into a vast archaeological site, exhibiting a decal of a skeleton’s enlarged image, stripped of its bones, merely a shape of that figure in the material, highlighting the relief of this vertical construction. The colossus will conceal the space where many of the works previously on display would have been, allowing the viewer only to peek in, fitting the face centimetres away from the in-depth skull that mimics the shape of human remains, Serra’s cross-cutting Blastogénese (2020), the face emerging from an egg as a consciousness figure. This head, once shown in black and now covered in white, almost disappears. SantoSilva is tasked with extending the wax floor down the corridor, gaining steps and keeping the wax figure in the background.
But which themes do we owe this continuing narrative of different materials, authorships and chronologies to? What brings them together seems to be reflections on historical ancientness, origins, creation and consciousness. We shall see.
We may consider Tomás Maia’s gradual construction of an archaeological site as the recovery of the first traces of humanity in prehistoric times. There is no room here for writing, concepts, digressions, or the ethereal. The quintessential figure of the Anthropocene is gradually rising from the earth: the human body. Its spatial positioning, at first insignificant, liable to be stepped on, a trace on the ground, then a small, still negligible pile, becomes an obstacle to what would, from the get-go, be the continuation of the exhibition, in an area that is already so small that it cannot afford to be cut in half. But it is.
This head lurks on the other side of the body, a brainchild of Rui Serra that sprouts like consciousness, questioning us about the origins of morality and reason. The figurative sculpture of the intellect is built in hard features reminiscent of Roman busts, particularly when painted in white, notwithstanding the simpler lines; after all, Classical Antiquity saw the arrival of the first great philosophers, theorising about the human nature, emotion, social organisation and the possibilities of the rational. It represents the abstraction, logic, creation and material culture that has long been regarded as humanity’s primary trait, distinguishing it from animals.
Stemming from this Blastogénese (2020), from the idea of a gestating being on its way to becoming conscious, is the religion towards which SantoSilva guides us. Facing a low-lit exhibition between black walls, the intimate, the sacred and the whisper are all present in this candle wax symbol, related to Christian religious ceremonies, to a time far removed from modernity with electricity, to medievalism if we are going to be cinematic. This candle, containing silence, semi-darkness, solitude and whispering, seems to be a natural extension of Maia and Serra’s philosophical enquiries. Beyond ceremonial burials and reasoning skills, one of humankind’s great features is the quest to explain phenomena outside of itself, the ability to have faith, the search for something greater than itself, an omniscience that supports it. SantoSilva opens up this path for us to explore.
The exhibition Colosso – a viagem, the last of its sections, is on show until January 20 at Brotéria. A podcast conversation between the artists and the venue’s curators will be released soon.