Daniel de Paula ‘a forma condutora de fluxos dominantes’

Jaqueline Martins gallery expands its premises, set to host previously unseen Daniel de Paula exhibit in August.

Objects, installations, archaeological artifacts, actions and documents are featured in the exhibition a forma condutora de fluxos dominantes (the conductive form of dominant flows), the outcome of lengthy research into the production of space as the reproduction of domination policies. The show will mark the gallery’s ground floor launch.

Artist and researcher Daniel de Paula’s exhibit is meant to provide a diachronic perspective, featuring several previously unseen, interrelated artworks – including objects, installations, documents and texts – and offering a critical take on various strategies designed to expand and materialize spatial control in recent Brazilian history. The show is set to open on August 5, marking the launch of gallery Jaqueline Martins expanded exhibition facilities.

By evidencing spatial production patterns as the reproduction and affirmation of social and political relationships of dominance, the artist’s newer works deal with the uneven, fast-paced urbanization currently underway, as well as with its inextricable colonial-era holdovers.

The solo show will span the gallery’s entire ground floor, featuring developments from research initiated in earlier projects by the artist – ones whose stance is unbounded by the domains of art, allowing themselves to intersect with notions of history, geography, geology and astronomy, in interventions, actions and installations that prompt critical reflections on the bureaucratic, historical, economic, political and social structures that shape the space around us.

A standout among the artist’s never-before-shown works is the presentation of an archaeological artifact (along with documentation) from the collection of the Brazilian Navy’s Historical Heritage and Documentation Authority. The item is a rock originally from Portugal that was used as ballast in Portuguese vessels during transatlantic journeys to colonial-era Brazil. It was retrieved during an underwater archaeological expedition off Brazil’s coast. “It’s important to note that while ballasts from Portugal, in the context of colony-age Brazil, were used to provide stability to ships during trips, they were also later incorporated in the construction and décor of buildings and the paving of thoroughfares and sidewalks in Brazil”, explains the artist.

Recurrent procedures and objects from his recent works will also be on show. Negotiations with and through urban infrastructure, appropriations of public-state equipment, and interactions with the agents that constitute the exhibition space and its surroundings will materialize in scaffolding structures retrieved from public infrastructural works, geological accounts from urban mobility works, and the participation of gallery staff and furnishing in installations.

Instead of a curatorial text, the exhibition features an interview with historian and professor Dr. José Jobson Andrade de Arruda, who does research on Modern and Contemporary Brazilian Economic History. Arruda holds a degree in History and a doctorate degree in Modern History from the University of São Paulo, where he is also a senior professor at the Department of History and in the Postgraduate Program in Economic History.

 

Galeria Jaqueline Martins (press release)