Carmela Gross: Volcano

Sep 4, 2021 - Jan 2022

Carmela Gross: Volcano

Curated by Beatriz Lemos, Keyna Eleison and Pablo Lafuente

MAM Rio presents Vulcão (2019/2021), a work by São Paulo artist Carmela Gross. Composed of lines yellow and red LED lines, the large-scale installation will occupy the west facade of the building designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, to question the gaze of those who walk around or see the museum from a distance.

The project was born from a long exercise, which began with drawings in notebook, and went through several stages until it reached the gable of MAM Rio: "Between 2017 and 2018, I collected photos of volcanoes that I found in books, newspapers, magazines and electronic media. I elaborated the visuality of each one through digital operations, enlarging, cropping and simplifying their shapes into compact black and white patches."

After composing a collection of images of volcanoes, Gross digitally processed them in small format and reproduced each one through drawings in India ink and pencil on paper, in a daily exercise of creating dark masses and clouds of soot.

Volcano is a questioning about architecture and art, movement and paralysis, death and life pulses. It invites the public to participate, from near or far, and through lava, dust, gases, and other mysteries in eruption, it affirms the importance of making chorus to the collective strength of those who see.

Volcano is part of the Interventions 2021 Program, sponsored by the City of Rio de Janeiro, Municipal Secretariat of Culture, by Icatu and Multiterminais, through the Municipal Law of Incentive to Culture - ISS Law.

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Curatorial text

For Carmela Gross, drawings are always experiences linked to operations that constitute subject and world. Vulcão (Volcano) was born from a long exercise that began with notebook drawings until it reached the west façade of MAM Rio in large scale. The work, composed of yellow and red LED lines, intends to question the multiple viewpoints of people walking around or seeing the building from a distance.

The various points and luminous lines that conform the urban spaces guide the daily paths in the cities. Carmela Gross' trajectory shows a persistent interest in relating to these spaces and technologies of orientation, and Volcano is the result of this impulse.

Under the order of stubbornness, the work also responds to the desire to reflect on a world in convulsion, which rebels and manifests itself with the force of the cataclysms of Brazilian history. The work seeks to merge with the urban at the same time that it guides reflection, in a questioning about architecture and art, movement and paralysis, death and life pulses. It invites the public to participate, from near or far, and, through lava, dust, gases, and other mysteries in eruption, it affirms the importance of making chorus to the collective strength of those who see.

About the artist
Carmela Gross was born in São Paulo in 1946. The artist has made large-scale works that are inserted in the urban space and that mark a critical look at architecture and urban history. The common axis, beyond the diversity of contexts and proposals elaborated in each case, is the basic concept of working-in-the-city. The set of operations that involve from the conception of the work, through the production process, to the arrangement in the place of exhibition emphasize the dialectical relationship between the work and the space, between the work and the public/crowd. The works seek to engender new artistic perceptions that affirm critical action and thought and bring to the fore the semantic charge of place, be it a public space, an institution or the moment of an exhibition.