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Vendas de sorvete provocam ataques de tubarão

11/21 2013 – 12/21 2013


By the end of the 19th century, during the transition period known as the Industrial Revolution, the eight-hour day movement emerged in England. Its main demand was the reduction of the workday to eight hours (at a time when working ten to sixteen hours a day was the norm). According to a rational division of the day in three equal periods, the slogan used by the movement was Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest. More than just a rational redistribution of time, its radical aspect maybe resided in the objective of recovering time itself.

Ice cream sales cause shark attacks, the first solo show by Roberto Winter at Mendes Wood DM, takes its title from the text of the artwork False correlation. The text is an example of a logical fallacy that attributes a cause-effect relationship to two events that merely happen at the same time. Amongst other possibilities, the existence of a third element, initially ignored, may be the origin of the mistake. In this case, summer.

And in the entire exhibition, summer; that is, whichever this third element might be. An element, whose presence is usually only perceptible when it becomes palpable in absence, or yet, when its existence is magnified by subtraction. A scale without gravity, a screw without thread, a genome without organism, a cube without space, a space without dimensions or life without time. In a period of crisis (therefore transition), in which the relationships between labor, recreation and rest become increasingly less obvious.

Roberto Winter was born in 1983 in São Paulo, where he lives and works. He has participated in group shows such as The state of the art at Elba Benítez gallery in Madrid; Mythologies at the Cité des Arts in Paris and Repeat to Fade, at Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo. He has also published texts, such as Feedback on the 6th edition of Caderno Videobrasil; taken part in debates and seminars, such as the lecture From pornographic to social (and back) delivered at a symposium in the 6th edition of Itaú Cultural's Art and Technology Biennial; co-curated shows, such as Shadowed by the future, at Instituto Cervantes in São Paulo.