In her second solo exhibition at Galeria Millan, considered one of the promises of the new Brazilian generation, Tatiana Blass (born in São Paulo, 1979) presents Teatro para cachorros e aviões. The exhibit consists of paintings and sculptures that allude to the idea of leaving: airplanes that fly away and dogs that are absorbed into the canvas and melt onto the gallery floor.
Unfolding from the previous series Teatro da despedida, the new sculptures molded as wax dogs will melt throughout the duration of the exhibition, resembling the process of deconstruction, as it where a performance. In one of the pieces, the dog’s bones will slowly be exposed, as the reflector placed on top of the sculpture heats the wax daily. Another new work, encrusted on the gallery wall, is the negative brass mold of the dog. The positive part of the piece, the dog made out of wax, will suffer the same process, melting away allowing the brass to stand out.
On the showcase that occupies the gallery’s corridor is the work Cão cego, already exhibited in the chapel of MAM-Bahia, in Salvador, August 2009. Molded from a dog lying on the ground, parts of the animal’s body are made of brass and other made from melted wax, “creating a marriage of materials with different temperaments in one figure”.
The group of paintings, part of the series, Teatro para cachorros e aviões, resembles the language of theater, placing the dogs, airplanes and other figures as characters of a play. “The works reflect on the paintings as a fictional construction where the illusionary space of the canvas is added to the illusionary space of the theater stage creating an open space narrative”, explains Tatiana Blass.
On the upper floor of the gallery the artist presents paintings together with a text written by the artist herself also entitled Teatro da despedida. Each painting corresponds to a paragraph of the text, which are all printed on a booklet made available to the public.
According to Tatiana Blass, the recurring figure of the dog appears due to its incapacity of being represented. “They are as actors of everyday life that drift through the scene, lacking a predestined behavior”. The references to the theater stage, as put by the artist, are shown on the paintings and sculptures as a mundane place, or even as its own world where a never-ending acting takes place, where the actor becomes the character, assuming its identity as its own. “The actor is forgotten, only the character is left”, she resumes.