Fundación MARSO welcomes Galeria Vermelho with a project by Tania Candiani

Opening Tuesday February 5th, 2019 at 19 hrs.

De fábulas y telones.

Tania Candiani was working on her exhibition Cuatro Actos, at Espacio Odeón in Bogota, when she decided to film El principio, el paréntesis y el fin, el telón (The Beginning, the parenthesis and the end, the curtain). She was focusing on theatrical language, its mechanisms and codes of communication as strategies to reveal and hide a specific construction of reality, when she began to see the theater curtains as landscapes. Candiani saw in the drapes, pleats and planes of the curtain fabrics mirages of topographies, of mountain ranges, valleys and deserts.

In the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., USA, Candiani researched texts that investigated curtains as landscapes and collected writings as diverse as the epic poem Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, El hombre del telón by Leila Guerriero, and Fábulas de Fredo by the Roman fabulist Gaius Iulius Phaedrus, as well as works by five other authors.

Texts and words became the material of Candiani’s work that through the assemblages, deviations and fragmentations, composed a new text that lead images captured from different theater curtains. The artist studied different types of curtains that, with their specific uncovering methods, trigger a variety of scenic effects. Tania also captured the pleats of the robes on stone statues at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., USA, which resemble stone curtains. A stroke of luck allowed Candiani to record the moment when technicians removed and folded the curtain at Teatro León de Greiff in the National University of Colombia.

Tania Candiani divided the film into three parts. In the first part, on static images of curtains, the text refers to the curtains as landscapes of configurations filled with geographical accidents. In the second, the curtains sway, shake and open to show the scenes and their action potential to an audience ready to devour the possible narratives revealed. The texts come from titles of fables and sound ominous, threatening or fortunate. In the third part, at the end of the show, the curtains close and the lights come on, revealing forgotten curtains, aged, full of dust and wounds.

Fundación MARSO welcomes Galeria Vermelho (Saõ Paulo, Brasil) with a project that will show El principio, el paréntesis y el fin, el telón, as well as the installation Cuatro telones, a result of the long duration performance Cuatro Actos. This exhibition- performance was divided in movements in where the making of each curtain could be observed, its installation in the old theater and a performatic action that accompanied each curtain.Each movement was superposed to another one, where another curtain was made, installed and inaugurated with a theatrical action. In the exhibition De fábulas y telones (Of Fables and Curtains), now at Fundación MARSO, the espectador can walk through the four curtains, creating their own narratives of space.

–– Gabriel Zimbardi

Galería Vermelho and the artist extend a special thank you to Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia) and their curator Alejandra Sarria.

About the artist​

Tania Candiani (Mexico City, 1974) is a fellow of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, in México since 2012, received the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2018; Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2011, Award of Distinction from Prix Ars Electronica in 2013, amongst other. In 2015 she represented Mexico, together with Luis Felipe Ortega, at the 56 Venice Biennial with Possessing Nature.

Her work has been widely shown around the world and can be found in important public and private colections sucha as MUAC, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo; Museo Amparo; Laboratorio Arte Alameda; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros; Museo Carrillo Gil; Centro Cultural Tijuana; Museo de Arte de Sonora; en México; PAMM Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami Florida; Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla; The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, California; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California; Deutsche Bank, Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles, California; to name a few.

taniacandiani.com