curated by luisa duarte roesler hotel #25 -- dispositivos para um mundo (im)possível,

Set to open on February 15, Roesler Hotel #25 -- Dispositivos para um mundo (im)possível (Devices for a(n) (im)possible world) provides a cross-section of contemporary art production since the 1980s, looking to enmesh poetry and politics, aesthetics and ethics in artworks which, according to curator Luisa Duarte, "are based on the realization that modern utopias are over and done with” and from whence “there emerges a sort of active nihilism, as well as the survival of some critical value, humanistic and remotely hopeful.”

The year of 1989 is one of the show’s mileposts: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the failure of governments with egalitarian aspirations, the rise of the yuppies, and the success of individualistic, liberal policies that ran counter to the movements of immediately preceding decades, all date from the same period as the series of paintings by Leonilson, onto which the artist has written: "Leó fails to change the world." Having Leonilson as a starting point perhaps means considering that every reflection about a new possibility of life in society necessarily entails, as a priority, the truly political task of rebuilding our affections. Conversing with the artist’s skeptical utterance, the show features artworks which reflect about the dreams of modernity and its shortcomings. While not giving in to cynical renouncement or to a naïve belief in change through charity-like work. The pieces selected present new possibilities while considering the current scenario, “like gaps that have grown amidst the ruins of an unfinished modern project."

In Dispositivos para um mundo (im)possível, art, as a testament to its time and constantly conversing with society, returns to the “digression on the demise of utopias, but (…) relativizes the path to 'salvation' from the powerlessness contained in such diagnosis. The wager here is on delicacy, on belief coexisting with hopelessness. On the possible as a space to be questioned, on its liberating aspects,” says the curator.

Artworks by André Komatsu, Antonio Dias, Carlos Bunga, Carlos Garaicoa, Clarissa Tossin, Felipe Arturo, Guido van der Werve, Jorge Macchi, Laercio Redondo, Lais Myrrha, Leonilson, Lucia Koch, Marcius Galan, Marilá Dardot, Melanie Smith, Milton Machado and Nicolás Robbio comprise the exhibit.

about the curator
Luisa Duarte is an independent curator and the holder of a master’s in philosophy from the Pontifical Catholic University in São Paulo. An art critic for newspaper O Globo and a member of the board of consultants to the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, she coordinated the cycle “A Bienal de São Paulo e o meio artístico brasileiro” (The São Paulo Biennial and the Brazilian art scene) during the 28th Biennial of São Paulo (2008), curated the show Um outro lugar (Another Place, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2011), and was a member of the curating committee for the Rumos Artes Visuais Program (Itaú Cultural, 2005/2006). Alongside Adriano Pedrosa, she organized the book ABC - Arte Brasileira Contemporânea, released by publisher Cosac Naify in 2014. She lives between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.