The relationship between art and science in contemporary art is generally associated with new technologies and digital media. Yet this partnership is one of the keys to understanding technical images in all their diversity. A good example is the exhibition Maquinaria, by Marcelo Masagão, on view at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, which combines optical devices and varied forms of image printing and processing, transforming scientific assumptions into new aesthetic languages.
The exhibition proposes a game of subversions between pre- and post-photographic regimes of vision. A varied array of image machines, materials, and imaginations is at work in this exhibition.
State-of-the-art image-capture devices, from drones to 360-degree cameras, are combined with technologies ranging from traditional Portuguese tilework to popular nineteenth-century panoramas. All this is synthesized through sublimation processes, inkjet printing, and application to diverse supports ranging from wood to plastic.
The exhibition occupies Maria Antonia starting in its outdoor area, proposing alternative ways of perceiving the surrounding city and visual regimes that demand touch, interaction with furniture, and walking.
These ideas are embedded in the very title of the exhibition, which I had the pleasure of curating.
Without concessions to nostalgia or any fetish for media technologies, what is at stake in this exhibition is how to see the world and be in the city. It cannot be visited with the eyes alone. The whole body must be mobilized.
If I had to summarize Maquinaria in a sentence, I would say: See with your hands. Look with all five senses.
This Thursday, the 6th, we welcome critic Ronaldo Entler for a conversation with Marcelo Masagão and the public at 7 p.m. at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia.
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