Coletivo MUDA | Território Modular
Coletivo MUDA | Território Modular
Coletivo MUDA | Território Modular
Coletivo MUDA | Território Modular
Coletivo MUDA
From Aug 23 to Oct 04 2013
About the collective
Founded by the architects Diego Uribbe, Duke Capellão and Rodrigo Kalache, and the designers Bruna Vieira and João Tolentino in 2010, the Coletivo MUDA sees the city as an overhaul laboratory. MUDA derives from mudar, changes in Portuguese. And as a matter of fact, associated with street art, their spatial interventions changed the nature of Rio de Janeiro, where public spaces throughout the city now stage their various compositions. Their art is essentially focused in the experimentation and on the development of sui generis panels, coloured compositions of classic tiles and contemporary graphics that result in captivating and abstract aesthetics. We can think of Coletivo MUDA’s art as a tribute to famous Brazilian muralists such as Athos Bulcão and Paulo Werneck, or as a reference to artists such as Alfredo Volpi and Geraldo de Barros. Recently, the Coletivo MUDA’s presence has been expanded both nationally and abroad, with interventions throughout Brazil, Portugal, USA, Argentina and Cuba.
Modular Territory | Felipe Scovino
A central question arose for Coletivo MUDA's first exhibition in a commercial gallery: how to move the stories, meanings, and particular schemes, developed in the streets into the white cube? How to build a coherent, distinctive story in a place that has its own specificities (aseptic, market-driven, and, in this case, distant) as the gallery, or even merely move the artwork from the public into the private space?
MUDA's story originates in the streets. Their work is not linked to the city?s embellishment, but rather contemplates it critically. These are site- specific compositions are thought to engage and reflect on the specifics of that place, while also founding a new territory. Their history and motivations connects to a, say, Bauhasian desire of concrete artists, especially to Antonio Maluf ?s murals for Vila Normanda (1964), the Alberto Brandão Muylaert office (1962), and the Cambuí building (1963), among others. All these were produced in São Paulo, developed through a strategy that followed the same logic adopted by both the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists. Maluf?s production as a graphic designer (thus connecting it to the Coletivo MUDA members? architecture and design background) has contributed effectively to the development of a constructive language, collaborating, even if vanishingly, to the transformation of the city?s visual identity, integrating architecture and design, and relating it to the society?s daily life. With Athos Bulcão and Paulo Werneck, Brazil?s modernity realm met murals, panels, and the city itself in a perfect symbiosis. References to the Coletivo MUDA, both artists contributed significantly to the composition of the country?s new identity. Fragmented, modular, directly influenced by geometric abstraction, and averse to any figurative representation (which predominated Brazilian art at the time), their works have furthered one of the most singular contributions to how individuals commence to observe and understand their surroundings. Bulcão, Werneck and Maluf?s approach and strategy in structuring, viewing, interpreting and resizing the city were, given their own specificities, the same with which the Coletivo MUDA now reassigns new meanings to it. An attentive, critical, and affectionate look on the troubles and the particulars of their surroundings; their rhythms, colours and shapes creating a free association with the places where these panels or compositions are installed.
This possibility of dialogue with the visual arts, and more specifically with artists who had or have the streets as subject and object, is rather insightful. The optical vibration of Raimundo Colares? buses ambiguously develops a fast pace to that painting with which it approaches the virtual modules of image apprehension caused by the works of the Coletivo MUDA. It is this pop-kinetic perspective that connects them too. The way in which Raul Mourão and Marcos Chaves ? each in their own manner, but adopting the common representation of a flâneur ? looks at the city and problematizes it (whether through Mourão?s grids, concocted from urban apparatuses derived from the society?s fear and moving into the sculptural sphere, or by means of Chaves? Holes series, in which photographs register and illustrate the sarcastic way in which potholes are covered with all sorts of elements) approaches itself from the Coletivo MUDA?s urban observations, criticisms, and transformations. It is not a passive look, but a transforming agent, made possible through a poetic reading of the public space. There is no adornment or spectacular attitude for or about the city, but actions that show how the city is alive, ever-changing, always renewing itself and the way we look at it. The use of spray paint is therefore intuitive. An element strongly associated with graffiti art and an aesthetic performance deeply connected to the city finds, in this way, a new practical expression in this group: it becomes a brush that gently composes graphical shapes that modularly varnishes the city?s skin.
It is admittedly curious that the queries in the beginning of this writing have been devised from reflections on public and private spaces, and the fact that this exhibition is taking place in a friendly house in Botafogo (we shall not forget though that, above all, it is still a gallery). However, the central issue I would like to explore is the following: in a room with no windows, the MUDA brings into the white cube what was missing in that place, and something for which they have the greatest respect, that is, the street, the nature and the city. Their boxes, objects, and sculptures transform the gallery?s visitors into a pedestrian, a wanderer. We need to move, walk before these works to realise the varied visual games and their own dynamics provided. These are also nearly kinetic, transforming the medium and the relationship we have with the artwork (and the city, and in the specific case, the group's works in Rio de Janeiro) into an organism. In this exhibition, everything is in motion, including the city itself.
Felipe Scovino is a professor at Escola de Belas-Artes da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He also works as an art critic and curator.
