Exhibition Me, You and the Moon at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo

09/08/2023 - 28/01/2024

Description of the Exhibition
Tunga (1952 - 2016) was interested in alchemy, psychoanalysis, science and philosophy. Over four decades, he built a unique mythology, in which the notions of permanence and transformation are fundamental. One of the last works created by the artist and unpublished in Brazil, Eu, Você e a Lua (2015), will be presented from August 9 to January 28, 2024, in the Glass Room of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo. The show is supported by the Tunga Institute.

“In Tunga's poetics, what is on planet Earth or outside of it, the internal and the external, as well as me, you and the moon, form an indivisible whole”, reflects Cauê Alves, chief curator of MAM, in the text that accompanies the work.

Eu, Você e a Lua brings together frequent elements of his work, such as stones, mirrors, crystal and plaster bottles, and plates attached to rings and rods. The body of the installation is formed by a large hollow and petrified trunk, supported by two tripods. Under the shadow cast by the work in the Glass Room, an amber color runs through almost the entire length of the trunk. The mirrors that make up the work reflect quartz bottles above and below.

“The fossil of a tree that has remained intact, as if time were suspended, coexists with an essence of amber, a fragrance with woody touches that drips as if an hourglass marks the passage of time and the transformation of matter. Using smell and vision, the original and prehistoric elements in Tunga's work merge with the contemporary and ephemeral presence of perfume”, explains Cauê Alves.

The work will be shown at MAM as it was originally shown in France, in 2015, at the Center d'Arts et de Nature, in Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, with a clay floor, which composes the woody and earthy atmosphere of the environment .

Tunga imagined the human body reconstructed from the landscape and therefore united disparate elements in order to create a new sensibility. “I call it 'the moon gaze'. What is at stake here is the transmutation of the gaze into perfume [...]”, stated the artist in an article by Myriam Boutoulle, Tunga, l'amour, la lune et l'arbre alchimique, published in 2015.

about the artist

Antônio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão, known as Tunga, was born in 1952 in Palmares, Pernambuco, and lived and worked in Rio de Janeiro. He was the first contemporary artist to exhibit his work on the pyramid of the Louvre, in addition to having participated in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, in 1982, and Documenta de Kassel, in 1992. Today, the artist's work is in the collections of MoMA, in Nova York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Center Pompidou, in Paris; the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tate Modern, in London.

Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP) / Ibirapuera Park, gate 3 - s/n / São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Where:
Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP) / Ibirapuera Park, gate 3 - s/n / São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
see map
When:
Aug 9, 2023 - En 28, 2024
Inauguration:
Aug 09, 2023 / 10 am to 6 pm.
Time:
From mars to sunday from 10 am to 6 pm.
Price:
BRL 25.00 full and BRL 12.50 half price
Commissioned by:
Cauê Alves
Organized by:
Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP)
Participating artists:
Antonio José de Barros Carvalho - Tunga
Official links:

Official links:
web
Hang tags:
Installation Installation in Sao Paulo