21ª Bienal de São Paulo - Fundação Bienal de São Paulo - 1991

Macbeth Mauser situates itself at the intersection of the Visual Arts and the Performing Arts, a very rich yet little explored territory among us, due to neglect, prejudice, and incompetence. The work of Adriano Guimarães, Fernando Guimarães, and Ricardo Junqueira raises several kinds of questions.

In an academic visual arts discussion, which divides a painting into figure and background, the theatrical set could likewise, in academic terms, be considered the background for the actors’ figures. Macbeth Mauser reverses this situation, questions what a set is, isolates it from its theatrical reality, and, based on its visual content, grants it the condition of the subject of artistic discourse.

The installation can be seen as an archaeology of tragedy, using the expressive elements that remained after it occurred. Clothes and objects are scattered across the ground, as if the place had been abandoned in haste—so much so that the candles were left burning. We have the feeling of being present on the day after the documented situation. But gradually, we notice the work of Time in the rusted iron, in the melted wax of the candles. We begin to realize that we are walking through a rich archaeological site, and that “yesterday” may be historical and metaphorical, not temporal. The question posed is: What is real? Which is the true “yesterday”? The one of the still-burning candles, or that of the metal already corroded by rust, slowly at work?

Who might have been the inhabitants of this Pompeii without lava? What ambition would have driven the owners of these sensual and barbaric garments? Why would they have left behind their symbols of power? What despair led them to such a hurried escape? Do the deteriorated images belong to these unknown inhabitants, or do they represent figures from their past? All answers are possible, and this ambiguity enriches the atmosphere of the installation and leads us to another type of question—the relationship between time and space proposed by the work. The tragic situation suggested is compressed into the time of the visit and the space of the installation. The many times and places that led to that extreme situation, which we only glimpse, are reduced to a single one—different from real time and space, yet creating a new reality—or a poetic unreality—that compresses the universal, which is sensed, into the particular, which is experienced by the visitors.

At the end of the visit, overwhelmed by the apocalyptic atmosphere experienced, we perceive the biblical return to dust that awaits us all. And we understand the primitive religiosity that emanates from the place—a sacred space of sacrifice.

After all, the gods of Art are pagan, and they know how to demand their tribute of blood.

JOÃO CÂNDIDO GALVÃO
CURADOR DA 21' BIENAL INTERNACIONAL DE SÃO PAULO
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In 1991, 21st São Paulo Biennial - The installation Macbeth Mauser. Presented at the Biennial Pavilion, the work articulated sculptural and spatial elements in dialogue with literary and political references, addressing themes of power, violence, and representation. Within a Biennial marked by diverse artistic languages and the reinstatement of open submissions, the installation highlighted the artist’s ongoing research into materiality, dramaturgy, and the symbolic construction of space, consolidating his presence in the Brazilian institutional art circuit in the early 1990s.