Entitled The Line through Absence, the new show by Cassio Michalany (1949, São Paulo, SP), will be unveiled on Saturday, March 25, at Millan. The show succeeds Cor-planar, held in the same space in 2019.
Michalany presents a set of about 20 works in the show. They are paintings with muted colors, made with industrial use paint applied on wooden boards and organized in different arrangements. The repetitive, careful, and subtle variations in tones and in size of the panels invites the observer to a careful contemplation, surpassing the mere rationalism of formal experimentation.
The curator, Giancarlo Hannud, highlights the consistency and coherence in Michalany’s production. With over 50 years of work, the artist has been acclaimed by his participation in important group shows, such as the 19th Bienal de São Paulo, in 1987, and the 17th and 19th Panoramas de Arte Brasileira, at MAM-SP, in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Michalany also participated in Abstraction: the mediated reality (2022), curated by Rodrigo Naves, also at Millan.
What stood out in Hannud’s selection from this cohesive body of work is the presence of the line. Instead of being simulated by the brush stroke, it appears in the artist’s work always through the materiality itself: “The whispered line, arising from the encounter between polychrome boards, is key to the delicate nature of his production, and it is in the repetition of the minimal space that exists between boards, boards and strips, or canvases, that the announcement of the skeleton of his practice resides. His works become irresistible in their variations through what is absent and what surrounds them.” Hannud writes in the curatorial text.
In addition to Cassio Michalany’s most recent pieces, which are previously unseen, the exhibition also features two drawings from a decade ago. The set on display is an example of the consistency and timeliness of the artist’s work and indicate the sensitive power of the audience’s experience with abstract art.
Giancarlo Hannud is an art historian and curator. He studied fine arts at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, in London, UK, and has a master’s degree from the Warburg Institute – School of Advanced Study. Hannud was the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo’s curator from 2010 to 2015, art history professor at Faculdade Santa Marcelina between 2014 and 2017, and the director of the Museu Lasar Segall from 2018 to 2020.