Descripción de la Exposición
A CASA TRIÂNGULO ESTARÁ FECHADA DE 6 A 19 DE MARÇO DE 2021 EM RESPEITO AS NOVAS ORIENTAÇÕES DE COMBATE À PANDEMIA NO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO.
Casa Triângulo is pleased to present the exhibition Bronze, Leather, Gold, blood, Paul Setúbal's first solo show at the gallery.
Paul Setúbal: Bronze, Leather, Gold, blood
by Priscyla Gomes
"(…) We will always be slave to the distilled malignity installed within us, both by the feeling of pain […], as well as by the exercise of the brutality on men, women and children converted into the fodder of our fury. The most terrible of our heritages is to bear the scar of the torturer printed on our soul and ready to explode in racist and classist brutality. It is what glows incandescent, even today, in so much Brazilian authority” — Darcy Ribeiro, O Povo Brasileiro [1]
The image of the backcountry dwellers, with their culture and tradition, is very widespread in Brazilian literature, film and other expressive genres. Isolated from or outside the scope of governmental power, and often a victim of its police system, the country person has repeatedly entered narrations as a wanderer anxious for transformation, opportunity and justice. The genesis of the country person is thus blended with the historical formation of Brazilian society, marked, among other aspects, by violent conflicts linked to the possession of the land and to the expansion and integration of the national territory.
The cattle-raising culture, intrinsically linked to the figure of the country person, was born from a gradual advance of the grazing lands toward the continent’s interior. The Center-West became one of its homes. Recurrently read as a territory of passage and marked by migration, its current population resulted from the miscegenation of these migrants with the local indigenous people, giving rise to the typical country person of those parts. In the exhibition Bronze, Couro, Ouro, sangue [Bronze, Leather, Gold, blood], artist Paul Setúbal, from that region’s state of Goiás, refers to this synthesis marked by violence and by domination as a mordant feature of Brazilian society.
The list that composes the title did not arise by chance. There is an explicit choice of these materials as clues not only of the elaborate processes of the casting, modeling, design, sewing and making of the pieces, but also as signs of the historical formation of a region that blends scant promises of a developmentalism with a continued abandonment of a large segment of its population.
Setúbal denounces the regional contradictions in Conto da Roça [Farm Tale] (2020), discussing an invasion of lands in Goiás after their illegal expropriation. The video evidences the dispute between the common people striving to possess land, involving weapons and a constant apology for bravery, for honor and for the idea that the death of another person can be a way of assuaging a history of social injustices. The weapon brandished as a trump card pervades much of the notion of physical power and masculinity linked to the country person. This sense of honor and bravery became the recurrent justification for washing the opposer in blood. In Sinapses (2015– 2020), Setúbal mixes, in an allegory of thought, references usually found in instruction manuals of firearms, clocks and apparatuses, as though it were possible to extract from these manuals an isometric representation of the logic of ideological and repressive apparatuses. The clear reference to the renowned studies by Da Vinci during the Renaissance seems to bring us briefly away from the nature of the materials and the clear dripping of the marks that pepper the entire canvas. Setúbal gives us a momentary glimpse of the beauty of this ideology of extermination. He gives us this piece to quickly deconstruct it.
The faces of the systemic and often institutionalized violence are explored by the artist in a constellation of signs appropriated from a wide range of corporations, spanning from militias to the imperial calvary. A grande peleja [The Great Fight] (2019) is a synthesis of different temporalities in the formation of the country’s military power. Setúbal makes a replica of the helmet of the Imperial Honor Guard (1822), created by King Pedro I and later re-created to be responsible for the safety of the president of the Republic. This piece substitutes the original dragon by the figure of a St. George wielding his lance to annihilate the colonial beast responsible for one of the founding violences, which continues to haunt our daily life.
Moreover, the way in which Setúbal articulates elements from a wide range of sources in order to construct his iconography of the country person is surprising for its historical transversality. For the unaware, the series Pesares [Sorrows] (2020) refers to the image of a squad that guards fake relics at the center of the exhibition space. The leather garments, exquisitely cut by the artist based on clothesmaker’s patterns, appear together with military caps, berets and some items appropriated from carnival costumes. Setúbal transits between refined culture and popular folklore, militarism and sexual articles, while including Christian myths, excerpts from paintings by Johann Moritz Rugendas and popular tales. For anyone who enters the room, these bodies that test the limits of gravity and materials, with a mix of unsustainable lightness seem to be waiting for the song of the cattle herders, the sad strains that prod the animals along their way. The configuration of the bodies and, moreover, their absence, is a clear metaphor of a historical journey that seems to be doubtfully in transit, but inactive. An inaction that yet today admits violence and extermination as structuring forces in the formation of a society – forces which have taken root with mistaken and incontestable naturality.
[1] RIBEIRO, Darcy. O povo brasileiro: a formação e o sentido do Brasil. São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 2000
PAUL SETÚBAL [1987, Aparecida de Goiânia, Brazil. Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil]. He holds a doctorate and a master's degree in Visual Art and Culture and a degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. Solo exhibitions: Corpo Fechado, C Galeria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [2018], Dano e Excesso, Andrea Rehder Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brazil [2016]; Aviso de Incêndio, Elefante Centro Cultural, Brasília, Brazil [2015]. He participated in several group exhibitions such as: No presente, a vida (é) política, Central Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil [2020]; Aparelho, Maus Hábitos, Porto, Portugal; 36º Panorama da Arte Brasileira: Sertão, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil and 29ª Edição do Programa de Exposições do Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil [2019]; Demonstração por Absurdo, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil and Arte, democracia, utopia: Quem não luta, tá morto!, Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [2018]; Osso, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil and Videografias Performativas, Dragão do Mar, Fortaleza, Brasil [2017]. Awards: Residency Award SP-Arte Delfina Foundation [2020]; Foco ArtRio [2018]. Residencies: Delfina Foudation, Londres, Inglaterra [2020]; Despina, Rio de Janeiro [2019]. His works are present in institutional collections such as Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Museu de Arte de Brasília, Brasília, Brasil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Goiânia, Brasil e Fundação Romulo Maiorana, Belém do Pará, Brasil.
Premio. 27 ene de 2025 - 10 mar de 2025 / Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava, España
Exposición. 29 ene de 2025 - 29 mar de 2025 / Galería Elvira González / Madrid, España
Formación. El 30 ene de 2025 / Fundación Juan March / Madrid, España