Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present Pedro Motta's second solo exhibition « Naufrágio Calado ».
Naufrágio Calado comes from the junction of two words that refer to a psychic state of uncertainty and disappointment. Naufrágio (sinking) sounds like a bankruptcy and decay of the elements that make up the works - abandoned boats and caravans. Calado (Quiet), who does not speak, makes no noise, refers to the strangeness and silence that images produce. In nautical language, Calado refers to the depth at which the lowest point of the keel of a boat is located in relation to the water line. The photographs presented are the result of several strategies: direct representation, material presentation and fictional construction. These images are the experiences of a state of decadence in which nature and society are devoid of their values.
The series is composed of several photographs of different formats that follow the same procedure that the artist already used in previous works: digital manipulation and confrontation between natural and human elements. The boats come from the cemetery of Roscanvel in Brittany and the caravans of a cemetery of New Zealand. They are embedded in landscapes that have been severely eroded as a result of intensive mining in the mid-1950s, when Brazil's motto was progress and development.
More than a political question, the assimilation of these images connects the past and the uncertain future of the country. The artist evokes unique elements of the landscape, makes visible the strangeness, the naturalness, the territory and the de-territoriality. All the photographs in the series were taken on full moon days, evoking a climate of nostalgia and strangeness in the landscape.
Falência # 2, 2018, created specifically for the gallery space, is composed of photographs of various types of erosions resulting from rainwater. The forms come from a hidden time where nature demonstrates its strength and beauty through destruction. The earth is totally devoid of structure, creating a kind of sculptural suture. The construction of the final image results from the Espaço Confinado series.
Small amounts of mineral pigments are inserted inside the frame, now in Falência # 2, it is as if, in a kind of hourglass space of the surface of the photo is emptied into infinity.
In Sobrecasa, 2018, very simple houses, some in the Victorian style of New Zealand, are moved into closed spaces, primitive caves generating an ambiguity that unites two spaces belonging to different times, two references of housing, protection and help.
