Entitled Ballasts and tensions. Deformation and receptivity, the exhibition is curated by Guilherme Wisnik and presents a selection of entirely new works.
Two years after Hole in the sky (2020), his last solo exhibition at the gallery, Túlio Pinto presents recent developments in his investigation into the limits of materials of industrial use. Somewhere between sculpture and installation, works produced with blocks or steel bars and bubbles of blown glass are organized according to precise arrangements of balance and force.
These works autonomously sustain themselves, in equilibrium, and place tension on presupposed conditions about the fragility of the glass and the weight of the steel. To achieve this result, at the workshop where the glass is blown, and while the material is still hot and malleable, these bubbles are pressed against sheets and beams of steel, so that they become molded against them. This process was developed in works in which the artist leaned pieces of concrete against party balloons - which, in the fight against this weight, gradually submitted and deflated.
“The first impression we have when we look at these sculptural works by Túlio Pinto is that these bubbles of glass will burst, since they apparently won’t resist in support of these brute masses. As such, there is a paradox, in the artist’s works there is a hint of a type of secular miracle, or, in truth, of a materialist explicitation: the volumes of glass are, yes, highly resistant, and even more so when their geometry is contorted, distancing them from the fragility of the planes of metal sheets. As such, while the iron bars create force as they are stacked up, the irregular bubbles of glass become deformed in order to support them. The conflict is resolved provisionally through accommodation”, in the words of the curator.
This operation, understood by the artist as a “performance of the materials” is configured in the precise organization of the pieces that comprise the works – taking into consideration the properties and antagonisms of the materials that make it possible for the works to remain stationary.
Moreover, there is a contrast between the organic form of the glass and industrial precision of the metal joints, for Wisnik: “So, to my eye, there is the strength of these improbable encounters, in the works of Túlio Pinto in iron and glass, or the clear geometric forms and irregular organicism of fragile structures molded through the brute force of compression. Or, furthermore, between the weight of the iron bar, of industrial origin, and the mutant consistency of the glassy film, which, delicately blown in the hand of a skilled artisan, is sculpted into forms through the movement of masses of air.”
Building on the debates posed by minimalism and Brazilian constructivist art, Túlio Pinto’s work singularly permeates the concepts of harmony, balance and ephemerality, formulating a coexistence of opposites, much the same as the experiences the viewers have with the space.