paulo bruscky

Galeria Nara Roesler is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Paulo Bruscky (Recife, PE, Br, 1949), the artist’s first at our New York gallery. The exhibition showcases the artist’s classified advertisements, as well documentation of historical performances, illustrating the artist’s seminal body of work spanning over 5 decades, many never finalized due  censurship imposed by the military dictatorship in Brazil during the first years of his artist’s career. The exhibition also contextualizes the artist’s work that will be presented concurrently with the exhibition at: the 57th Venice Biennale, where Art Is Packaged Any Way We Like, 1973 / 2017, which will be performed as part of “Viva Arte Viva,” curated by Christine Macel on May 11th to November 26; and the Americas Society in New York, when the artist will give a workshop based on his historic performance Xeroperformance, 1980, on May 24^th.

Bruscky’s visionary understanding of a communication society and multilayered conceptual approach account for the enduring relevance of his work, which is why we will also showcase the artist’s Tribute to George Orwell: 1984/2014, 2014, and Connection, 2013, as part of our selection for Frieze New York, 2017.

A multimedia artist and poet, Bruscky was a pioneer in “communication art,” a term coined by the artist himself. Like many artists of his generation, Bruscky believes that art should incorporate its surroundings and endeavor to defragment every-day life. An active proponent of the international mail art movement and a member of Fluxus, the artist performed unorthodox experiments with systems of communication such as artist books, classified ads, telegrams, telefaxes, faxes, the internet and the Xerox. Driving Buscky’s practice is a poetics of experimentation, anchored on the potentiality of media, a rejection of formalism, and a refusal to stagnate in the pursuit of recognition.

As Bruscky states, “I study equipment to see how I can subvert it, pluck it from what it’s meant to do, I mean, make it our ally, right?” The artist’s early experiments with the Xerox machine manipulated light to create distortions and superimpositions, effects which only a Xerox machine was able to create. The subjectivity created by the process, eventually led the artist to list the copy maker as a co-author in his catalogues. In fact, Bruscky’s playful engagement with the subjectivity of his authorship becomes evident when he confronts his xerographic alter-ego, exploring a “photolanguage” to document the encounter (Me with Myself, 1977).  From these early investigations emerged his Xeroperformances, 1980, in which the artist’s physicality becomes a component in his artwork as he began to record his bodily gestures on the glass plate of a copier.

Central to Bruscky’s investigations with imaging and reproduction techniques, is a desire to transform the status quo and create the impossible. In the 1970s Bruscky began posting announcements on newspapers, or “declassified art,” that interrupted the mundanity of the paper by offering extraordinary proposals to the reader. The announcements searched for technicians capable of recording dreams (Project of a Machine of Filming Dreams, 1977), records that would disappear as the record player needle went over it (Anthropophagic Record, 1984), and meteorologists capable of coloring clouds (Air Art, 1974/1982). “Using black humor, parody, and the situationist’s notion of detournément, Bruscky’s work operates as propositions to disrupt and transform social order as much in one’s mind as on city streets,” states curator Clara M Kim.

In his classifieds as well as in his performances, underlying the humor and genuine desire to create a poetic expression, is a political intent to undermine the oppressive regime that arrested and artistically paralyzed the artist throughout the 1960s and 70s. The artist’s Cemetery Art exhibition in 1971 was meant to memorialize the death of artistic autonomy under State censorship while tacitly reflecting on the deaths of political activists. However, when the exhibition was prevented by the authorities, the artist organized a funeral procession for his exhibition which took place in the streets of his hometown, Recife, until it was inevitably repressed. Bruscky retained this piercingly macabre sense of humor when he placed coffins bearing phrases into the river so that these would wash back to shore (Burial at Sea, 1972.) In the artist’s words, “I’d seal the whole coffin and stick some ironic phrase on it, something about the history of art or Brazilian military government. They eventually put two and two together and found that this was my work. It caused a commotion … and I kept a photo record of the whole thing”

Beyond his political criticism, Bruscky simultaneously engages in a questioning of the parameters for art making and exhibiting, entering in frequent dialog with contemporaries who also engage in institutional criticism. For the 30^o Salão Paranaense de Arte in 1973, the artist sent a telegram (Telex, 1973) relaying three proposals that constituted a performance/installation that reflected on the act of preparing an exhibition. The conceptual historicity of the salon made it a particularly suitable occasion to question the canonizing institution of art. Although accepted by the salon, the piece was never performed. That is, until this May when the artist will perform Art Is Packaged Anyway We Like It, 1973/ 2017, a performance based on the first proposal that will be taking place at the Venice Biennale’s exhibition “Viva Arte Viva”curated by Christine Macel.