Galeria Millan presents, from April 19th to May 20th, Nelson Felix’s original show “Variations for Cythera and Santa Rosa”. The exhibition, which occupies the spaces of both Galeria and Anexo Millan, is comprised of sculptures and drawings that reflect the actions of the Poetic Method for Decontrolling the Place series fourth work, initiated in 1984.
“As the title suggests, the Poetic Method is an attempt of translating an idea of space, of poetic construction, that amalgamates places through drawings and similar actions”, explains the artist. Like an opera and its acts, the three previous works – 4 corners, Verse and A Corner for the Cornerless –, were respectively made in Portugal (2007/08), in Brasilia (2009/11) and in São Paulo (2011/13). And now the fourth work will simultaneously be on display at Galeria Millan and at Museum of Moden Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro.
“As in modern poetry books, in which a relation between text and image was created by drawings and engravings, Method... has a similar process. In this sense, sculptures, drawings, actions, photographs, videos and displacements illustrate a text, shaping a notion of place that conforms to a drawing on terrestrial globe itself”, reveals Nelson Felix.
As in MAM-RJ’s project, in Variations for Cythera and Santa Rosa, Nelson Felix chooses Mallarmé’s poem A Throw of the Dice to disorganize the idea of a single exhibition space. On this basis, he throws a dice that has number six on all its faces over a world map at a predetermined date and time and in an incidental road route. The thrown dice defines its chance, not by the randomness of the numbers anymore, but by the randomness of its given position on the map. Thereby, the artist travels to Cythera, Ionic Greek island, and to Santa Rosa, in the Argentinian pampas.
There will be on display at Galeria and at Anexo Millan eighteen drawings (with sealing wax, marble, plants, steal wire, brass and cloth) and seven sculptures (made of Carrara marble, brass, plants and a TV), that make reference to the French poet and the spaces covered by the artist. “There is an intertwining of material and non-material issues attached to art surroundings nowadays, such as: information, meaning, history, hierarchy, time, etc; our current space, at least in art, isn’t that clean anymore. Like the previous ones, this fourth work also gathers indoor and outdoor environments, but its relevance lies in the multiple meanings that are created in the very site of the exhibition”, completes the artist.