José Patrício
Mandala tonal IV 2023
peças de quebra-cabeças de plástico sobre madeira ed unique
190 x 190 cm
Nara Roesler marks half a century as a gallerist. A story that began in the 1970s, at a time when its future course could not yet be foreseen, and which would go on to take her to many places. A trajectory that reached a crucial turning point in the following decade, when she established her gallery in São Paulo, and later, in other cities. A path that has never erased the traces of its geographical and affective point of departure: Recife and the Northeast of Brazil.
These traces are not expressed solely through the forms, colors, or themes of works produced by artists from the region. No repertoire employed in artistic creation, after all, can fully reveal what is particular to its making. What ultimately defines difference are the singular ways in which a shared symbolic repertoire is inflected to explain or to create worlds. It is in the ways a language is spoken that one recognizes where it comes from and how those places are understood. And it was the artistic accents articulated in the Northeast that gave the Nara Roesler gallery its distinctive voice. Other accents would follow, expanding the generative noise of what is mixed.
This exhibition brings together works by a diverse group of artists from the region. They are attempts, whether conscious or not, to capture the ways in which landscapes, trades, materials, beliefs, ideas, and bodies shape those who inhabit this part of Brazil. Such attempts are always incomplete or provisional, as all acts of representation inevitably are. These works affirm the creative vitality of artists who share a common symbolic ground, while at the same time weaving singular modes of expressing belonging.
As a gallerist, for 50 years Nara Roesler has contributed to ensuring that the desire to speak in one’s own way is heard. Her practice is grounded in the understanding that both her own accent and those of the artists she works with, perhaps unfamiliar to some ears, are themselves a method of action. May the celebration of these voices continue on its course.