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Lot Essay
‘In my work, tiles are not tiles, meat is not meat. It is all about simulation and parody’
–Adriana Varejão
Executed in 2002, Parede com Incisão a la Fontana 3 (Wall with Incision à la Fontana 3) is a startling, playful and visceral work by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão. As the title implies, Varejão is engaging with the work of Lucio Fontana, a giant of postwar art – and fellow South American – who is famed for slashing open the picture plane to reveal the infinity of space beyond. In this work, Varejão echoes one of Fontana’s iconic Tagli (‘cuts’) with a distinctly gruesome twist. Instead of flat, monochrome canvas, she presents us with a trompe-l’oeil rendition of pale blue tilework; rather than a clean, serene incision down its centre, the work gapes with a sculptural body-horror gash of glistening, flesh-like red, which bulges outward like a raised wound. Bloodily subverting Fontana’s cosmic vision, Varejão creates a vividly corporeal riposte to the sterile surfaces and hard cleanliness of Minimalist and Spatialist tradition. There is a dimension of erotic violence to her cut, which makes for a sly jab at the veiled dynamic of male desire in Fontana’s slashes. Varejão’s conception of the canvas as a wall also opens up ideas about how violence might be concealed beneath aesthetics, or indeed revealed through an excavation of history. Her country’s rich, hybridised visual culture includes the baroque Portuguese inheritance of azulejos, elaborately painted tiles which are today celebrated for their beauty but are also the legacy of a repressive colonialism; while Varejão has directly referenced azulejos elsewhere, the blue tiles in the present work instead seem to recall the Modernist municipal architecture of Brazil, as well as echoing the grids of Modernist art. What uncomfortable truths, Varejão asks, might be hidden behind these pure and spotless surfaces?
‘I believe in miscegenation,’ says Varejão, ‘not the dichotomy of master and slave. Brazil evolved as a country with a cultural (mestizo) identity that is so strong that it is impossible for any single identity to remain fixed, separate, and intact for more than one generation’ (A. Varejão, quoted in E. Cué, ‘Interview with Adriana Varejão’, Alejandra de Argos, 25 October 2016). This notion of admixture, dilution and cross-fertilisation stands in clear opposition to the absolutist attitude of artists like Fontana. Varejão’s invoking of ‘miscegenation’ – interbreeding – also has a carnal, sensual aspect: while she approaches art from a rigorous intellectual framework, there is a primal pleasure on display in her messy, fleshy disruption of the grid in works like Parede com Incisão a la Fontana 3. Austere order bleeds voluptuous chaos. The unnerving realism of Varejão’s sculpted flesh has a precursor in the work of Paul Thek, whose ‘Technological Reliquaries’ – equally realistic chunks of meat sculpted in wax and encased in Perspex vitrines – made a rude mockery of hard-edged Minimalist sculpture in 1960s New York. Varejão tackles the complexities of art history and her country’s culture with similarly scalpel-sharp wit. In her work, art is alive and the ideological physical. Confronting difficult questions and accepting no answers from her hallowed male forebears, she ruptures the skin of appearances to expose the troublesome lifeblood that pulses beneath.
–Adriana Varejão
Executed in 2002, Parede com Incisão a la Fontana 3 (Wall with Incision à la Fontana 3) is a startling, playful and visceral work by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão. As the title implies, Varejão is engaging with the work of Lucio Fontana, a giant of postwar art – and fellow South American – who is famed for slashing open the picture plane to reveal the infinity of space beyond. In this work, Varejão echoes one of Fontana’s iconic Tagli (‘cuts’) with a distinctly gruesome twist. Instead of flat, monochrome canvas, she presents us with a trompe-l’oeil rendition of pale blue tilework; rather than a clean, serene incision down its centre, the work gapes with a sculptural body-horror gash of glistening, flesh-like red, which bulges outward like a raised wound. Bloodily subverting Fontana’s cosmic vision, Varejão creates a vividly corporeal riposte to the sterile surfaces and hard cleanliness of Minimalist and Spatialist tradition. There is a dimension of erotic violence to her cut, which makes for a sly jab at the veiled dynamic of male desire in Fontana’s slashes. Varejão’s conception of the canvas as a wall also opens up ideas about how violence might be concealed beneath aesthetics, or indeed revealed through an excavation of history. Her country’s rich, hybridised visual culture includes the baroque Portuguese inheritance of azulejos, elaborately painted tiles which are today celebrated for their beauty but are also the legacy of a repressive colonialism; while Varejão has directly referenced azulejos elsewhere, the blue tiles in the present work instead seem to recall the Modernist municipal architecture of Brazil, as well as echoing the grids of Modernist art. What uncomfortable truths, Varejão asks, might be hidden behind these pure and spotless surfaces?
‘I believe in miscegenation,’ says Varejão, ‘not the dichotomy of master and slave. Brazil evolved as a country with a cultural (mestizo) identity that is so strong that it is impossible for any single identity to remain fixed, separate, and intact for more than one generation’ (A. Varejão, quoted in E. Cué, ‘Interview with Adriana Varejão’, Alejandra de Argos, 25 October 2016). This notion of admixture, dilution and cross-fertilisation stands in clear opposition to the absolutist attitude of artists like Fontana. Varejão’s invoking of ‘miscegenation’ – interbreeding – also has a carnal, sensual aspect: while she approaches art from a rigorous intellectual framework, there is a primal pleasure on display in her messy, fleshy disruption of the grid in works like Parede com Incisão a la Fontana 3. Austere order bleeds voluptuous chaos. The unnerving realism of Varejão’s sculpted flesh has a precursor in the work of Paul Thek, whose ‘Technological Reliquaries’ – equally realistic chunks of meat sculpted in wax and encased in Perspex vitrines – made a rude mockery of hard-edged Minimalist sculpture in 1960s New York. Varejão tackles the complexities of art history and her country’s culture with similarly scalpel-sharp wit. In her work, art is alive and the ideological physical. Confronting difficult questions and accepting no answers from her hallowed male forebears, she ruptures the skin of appearances to expose the troublesome lifeblood that pulses beneath.