Breathing without oxygen

About

Galeria Millan presentes, from October 10 through November 4, 2017, the group show Respirar sem oxigênio [Breathing without oxygen], organized by the artist Regina Parra. The show features works by 24 artists, including names of the new generation—Bruno Levorin, Claudio Bueno, Gui Mohallem, Haroldo Saboia, Heloisa Franco, Julia Gallo & Max Huszar, Julia Ayerbe, Laura Davina, Malka Borenstein, Patrícia Araujo, Thany Sanches—in dialogue with important works by Ana Mazzei, Afonso Tostes, Artur Barrio, Caetano Dias, Fancy, Lenora de Barros, Leticia Parente, Jannis Kounellis, Regina José Galindo, Nelson Felix, Tatiana Blass and Tunga. The proposal is to investigate the vulnerability of the body as a means to create new powers from a rich dialogue between different generations of Brazilian and foreign artists.

The selection of works traverses the years 1970 to 2017 and includes videos, sculptures, objects, paintings and drawings that cover the different deformations suffered by the contemporary body. Deformations that are not torture but a result of the “positions of a body that brings together the desire to sleep, to vomit, to toss and turn, to sit most of the time.”  (Lapoujade, David. O corpo que não aguenta mais); resulting from exhaustion, fatigue, from a body that can take no more. “It is a condition of the body to be affected by the forces of the world. Deleuze insists that a body never ceases to be submitted to encounters and confrontations: with light, with oxygen, with food, with sounds, etc. A body is, according to him, always ‘meeting other bodies,’” says Parra.

If this situation of extreme fragility can be seen as a sign of resistance, exhaustion would not necessarily mean complete paralysis. How, then, to turn great fatigue into power? How to breathe without oxygen? This is the central idea that will be presented by Parra: the collapsing body as a means for research and creation of new powers in the face of the political, cultural and affective incontinences of contemporary life.

To complement the proposal, Regina Parra invited the choreographer Bruno Levorin to develop and action as an answer to the question: "What are the spaces and boundaries that circumscribe communication between two bodies?". Levorin will begin from his meeting with the visual artist Haroldo Saboia to investigate choreographic practices that discuss the relationship between gesture, nomination and invocation.