Insightful essays by US and Latin American writers cover the entirety of his career, with special emphasis on his little-known New York period between 19. Accompanying the first full US retrospective of the Brazilian artist in over two decades, and the first ever to travel the country, this heavily illustrated volume captures the excitement and complexity of Oiticica’s paintings, sculptures, and installations. Coming close to a small museum retrospective, this excellent show by Oiticica shows that movements American artists were thought to have begun in fact were much more international in nature, originated by far-sighted artists from all over the world.In his ingeniously constructed works, Hélio Oiticica revolutionized the idea of interactive art. The paintings, too, often simple exercises negotiating a grid, look to the future, when this kind of imagery had a great hold in the 1970s. Much of the environmental work made today, especially architecturally oriented art reflecting an interest in sustainable structures, feel like they have been influenced by Oiticica, whose social sympathies cannot be separated from his astute grasp of both public space and private ritual. The description gives a good account of the mixture of public awareness and personal experience that characterizes Oiticica’s art, which clearly was more than ahead of its time. Intended to be a public site, the maquette indicates the placement of several Penetrables, installed so as to create an archeological site containing a theater to be experienced by one visitor at a time, along with a group of buried poems to be unearthed and read. The show at the other branch of the gallery, a few doors west of the first space, includes paintings and the model for Hunting Dogs Project (1961). © Estate of Hélio Oiticica, courtesy Lisson Gallery Hélio Oiticica , Hunting Dogs Project (Projeto cães de caça), 1961. In general, the installation plays with the clichés associated with Brazil as an exotic paradise-a lure for those interested in warm weather and easy pleasure. Other notable structures include large plants and ferns in clay pots, usually embellished with a board on which a poem by Roberta Salgado has been written. Their creaturely poise animates an otherwise lifeless landscape, animated only by the passage of the viewers, who make of this spectacle a cogent comment by Oiticica, in regard to his country’s impoverishment, but also the poetic possibilities engendered by such circumstances. There is also a large, open cage with a low, pointed wire roof, in which two macaws sit among color toys made of blocks and eat the seeds provided for them. As the viewer proceeds along the curving strip of gravel, he or she comes across two Penetrables, shedlike shantyhouses, too small to live in but built with the fabric and cheap wood we expect of their construction. Visually, the environment consists of a low expanse of sand, through which a gravel walkway has been established. Indeed, Oiticica’s remarkable ability to create experience in a durational sense with his installations, which in the case Tropicália fills the gallery’s large space and present gravel pathways surrounded by sand for visitors to walk through, looks contemporary even though it was created more than fifty years ago. His merger of urban awareness and a point of view that brilliantly explored a minimalist approach to painting opened avenues of artistic progress very much present in the way we make and consider work in the present. Together, the two exhibitions give a good sense of the innovatory imagination of Oiticica, who created memorable spaces, tied to architecture and a social realism that was ahead of its time. This double show in the two close-by spaces run by Lisson in Chelsea offers Tropicália (1966-67), the artist’s first installation, in one gallery and a selection of paintings and architectural models in the other. A poet of the favelas, or makeshift slums, found in Rio de Janeiro, Oiticica created installations that were influenced by the social circumstances of his environment. The Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-80) was one of the originators of installation art and conceptual art, establishing an influence still felt today. Gouache on cardboard, 15 1/4 x 16 7/8 in.
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