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Iemanjá Claus

01/12 2012 – 22/12 2012


Mendes Wood is pleased to present Iemanjá Claus, an exhibition-conversation between artists Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Jimmy Robert and Runo Lagomarsino. The exhibition will take place simultaneously in two variations at Diana Stigter in Amsterdam and at Mendes Wood in São Paulo, creating a network of possible meanings and contextual re-readings. 

In the words of Jimmy Robert, “It's a hybrid, a transition from one year to the next, a celebration; the combination of two seasonal icons – the goddess of the sea and the white-bearded man and his reindeer. Two different traditions, two continents: a transformation.”

This could potentially be the materialization of a dialogue that may or may not have previously happened in the imaginary space that lies between the Tropics and Europe. A construct that would define a discursive space that is open to many questions and yet does not attempt any definite statement within an exhibition format, but rather simply points out a potential argument. The exhibition is, as it were, a silent witness to a casual dinnertime conversation wherein the guests demonstrate affinities and a mutual curiosity that would in turn become a drive for a group show: spontaneity. 

The works on paper on display could function as an epistolary novel, the fragments of which constitute a whole due to their simple juxtaposition. United through materiality. An initial exchange that would perhaps be infinite, concerned with what could be seen as the construction of an idealized territory.

Similar works are exhibited in Amsterdam and São Paolo at the same time. A displacement that allows other ways of perceiving things, places, and people. The manifestation of a thought process: alterity.

Bringing to the front the interplay of distance and proximity. Our oblique language:    

“To discover and desire the singularity of the other, without feeling shame in discovering and desiring, without feeling shame about expressing that desire, without fear of contaminating oneself, because it is through that contamination that the vital powers expand, where the batteries of desire are charged.”

Suely Rolnik, “Anthropophagic subjectivity,” in (mis)reading masquerades, p.432,  published by revolver.


– Jimmy Robert, November 2012, Rio de Janeiro




About the works


Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Masks, 2012
sundry leaves and gold leaf

Masks relates to the Amerindian Indigenous cosmologies in two different ways. On one hand, it investigates the geometric patterns of their arts as a religious and ritual motives that subtly connect the sacred and the everyday. On the other, the leaves are of species that are important for the Indigenous peoples for different reasons: there are plants that are important for their subsistence such as the Bread-fruit trees or the Mandioca root. There are also poisonous plants that can be used fo hunting or for medicinal treatments as the Gravatá. You even have plants that are related to specific legends or stories such as the Pé de Boi. Others are of ritualistic use, such as the red Urucum seeds.

The economic, medical, poetic or religious sides of life blend  together through the gold drawings made on leaves, a common material used in Western projections about the rainforest and its inhabitants.

In a broader sense, the works continue to investigate concepts of geometry and materiality, themes which are close to Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. Here, he creates a mixture of two opposite materials in terms of status, thereby questioning topological ideas of surface, form and drawing.

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané was born in Barcelona in 1977 and lives in Brazil since 2004, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. He has recently had solo shows at Mendes Wood, São Paulo (2011), Halfhouse, Barcelona (2011), Centro Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janeiro (2010), Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona (2008), A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007). His works has been featured in the 30ª São Paulo Biennial, The Imminence of Poetics (2012); RongWrong, Amsterdam (2012), Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Antwerpen (2012), Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló (2011), Galeria de la Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona (2011), Galerie im Riegerungsviertel / Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin (2010), Galerie KoraAlberg, Antwerp (2010), Entes, Barcelona (2009), After-the-Butcher, Berlin (2009); Bienal de Teheran (2008); Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Santiago, Chile (2008) and el Centro Cultural, São Paulo (2007). Mangrané received grants and prizes from MUSAC, Ciutat d'Olot, CoNCA, ABC Prize, Miquel Casablancas, José García Jiménez Foundation, Akademie der Kunste. His upcoming projects include solo shows at La Central, Bogotá, Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto and Fundació Sunyol, Barcelona; as well as group shows Blind Field, Krannert Art Museum, Illinois Out of the blue at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid and Werkleitz 2013, Halle. Besides his artistic practice Daniel Steegmann Mangrané is one of the organizers of the experimental school Universidade de Verão at Capacete, Rio de Janeiro.



Jimmy Robert
Coffee Stains
2012
colour archival inkjet print

“I took this image in the Café Floresta Copan in Sao paolo where I would go every other morning to drink an espresso.
this is initially a wallpaper which is occupying the largest wall of the café which is held by a man in his sixties more or less.
 What I want to draw attention to here by making a re-production of the print as a photograph and re-contextualizing it in the gallery as an archival document of a gesture rather than a colonial document is the registration of the vandalist act of throwing coffee at the wallpaper, the brown stains are indeed coffee stains; a performative act that questions the persistence of that image in the café; while at the same time questioning how the past is negotiated or not.”

Jimmy Robert was born in 1975, in Guadeloupe, France. He lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Robert has recently exhibited his works at the 5th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art, Berlin; Tate Britain, London; WIELS, Brussels; Art:Concept, Paris; CCA Kitakyushu Project Gallery, Japan; Cubitt Gallery, London; Neuer Aachen Kunstverein, Germany; MoMA in New York; CAC Bretigny, France and Diana Stigter, Amsterdam. Jimmy Robert was the 2009 laureate of the Follow Fluxus–After Fluxus grant and was nominated the same year for the prix Ricard in Paris. In 2002 Jimmy Robert had two solo shows: langue matérielle at gallery du Jeu de Paume in Paris and Vis-à-vis at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago.



Runo Lagomarsino
Crucero del Norte (1976-2012)
15 exposed Sunprint papers

“In the spring of 1976 my father exiled from Argentina. He travelled by bus from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, where he joined my mother and sister. Together they crossed the Atlantic on an Italian ship. In October of 2012 I made the same journey, covering the 2700 kilometres between the two cities aboard a Crucero del Norte bus. I carried with me a package of sunlight sensitive paper. Arriving at the bus station in Rio de Janeiro, 45 hours after my depart, I opened the package and let the sunlight hit the papers surface.”

Runo Lagomarsino (born in Lund, Sweden, in 1977; lives and works in Malmö, Sweden and São Paulo, Brazil) participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, 2007–2008 and received his MFA from the Malmö Art Academy in 2003. Recent group exhibitions include, The Unexpected Guest, Liverpool Biennal (Liverpool, 2012); The Imminence of Poetics, The 30th São Paulo Bienal (São Paulo, 2012); Unfinished Journeys, The National Museum of Norway (Oslo, 2012); Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011 (Istanbul, 2011), Speech Matters, 54th Venice Biennale, Danish Pavilion, (Venice, 2011); The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2010); The Travelling Show, Colección Jumex, (Mexico City, 2010), Report on Probability, Kunsthalle Basel, 2009; Panorama da Arte Brasiliera (Museu de Arte Moderna São Paolo, 2009); OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding, (Parsons the New School for Design, New York, 2008); and the 7th Gwangju Biennale, Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, (Gwangju, 2008). Recent solo exhibitions include, Even Heroes Grow Old,  Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, (Stockholm, 2102); OtherWhere
Nils, Stærk, (Copenhagen, 2011), Hay siempre un día mas lejos, 
Galeria Luisa Strina Espaço projeto, (São Paulo (2011); Violent Corners, ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, (Bolzano, 2011); and The G in Modernity Stands For Ghosts, Centro de Artes Visuais, (Coimbra, 2010); Las Casas is Not a Home, Elastic (Malmö, 2010).