Adriana Varejo

Echo Chamber

Adriana Varejo
Echo Chamber
March 18June 5, 2005
Press opening with the artist on Thursday, March 17, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm

Filled with references to Baroque art, the colonial history of Brazil, libertine literature and traditional Brazilian music, Adriana Varejos artwork offers a powerful visual experience. Her lacerated paintings,
ripped open to expose raw flesh, her works inspired by traditional
Portuguese azulejos create a tension between painting, sculpture and
architecture. For the first time in Europe, the Fondation Cartier pour
lart contemporain will present, from March 18 to June 5, 2005, a
major personal exhibition by this artist who stands out as one of the
most original figures in contemporary Brazilian art today. The text of
the exhibition catalogue Adriana Varejo, Echo Chamber will be written
by Philippe Sollers.
Illusion, theatricality, monumentality, excessiveness, artifice, allegory, disguise The works of Adriana Varejo
invent a modern Baroque. In trompe lil, they deceive the eye and the senses. Painted canvas or ceramic?
Sculpture or painting? Adriana Varejo ushers the viewer into web of references and substitutions, cites her
sources in order to better subvert them. Specially created for this exhibition, Celacanto provoca maremoto
[Coelacant Provokes Submarine Earthquake]1 suggests a tiled azulejo wall: a colossal, breaking wave, in the
Hokusai style, moves across the ground floor of the Fondation Cartier. A profusion of churning blue-hued
arabesques, an organized chaos of foam, this ensemble of 52 paintings whose crackled surface evokes the texture of Chinese celadon creates a syncopated rhythm, the visual equivalent of Brazilian choro music. Serial and
modular, this kind of arrangement lends itself to experimenting with permutation and substitution. Symbolic
substitution, as in Figura da Convite [Entrance Figure], 1997, a subtle marriage between the traditional genre
of painted ceramic used to decorate the entrances of Portuguese and Brazilian palaces in the 18th century and
engravings by Thodore de Bry (from his anthology America, 15901635) depicting scenes of cannibalism
encountered in the New World. Substitution is again at play in Proposta para uma Catequese [Proposal for a
Catechesis], 1993, which crosses the miracle of transubstantiation with an anthropophagic ritual to express the
essential hybridism of Brazilian culture.
Evocative of the organic quality of Baroque buildings, the jagged outlines of the two ruins in the works
Linda da Lapa and Linda do Rosrio, 2004, reveal, through the broken wall fragments, strips of flesh.
Inspired by a real incidentthe collapse of a hotel de rendez-vous in the middle of Rio de Janeiro in 2002
these monumental works produced for the exhibition are related to earlier pieces such as Parede com Incises
a la Fontana [Wall with Incisions a la Fontana], 2002, and Azulejaria Branca em carne viva [White Tilework
in Live Flesh], 2002, in which the artist interrogates the substance of painting itself. In 1992, Adriana Varejo

broke away from expressionist practices, opening up her canvasses, lacerating them, gouging them, letting a
nether world beyond painting emerge. Flesh, both symbolic and realistic, appeared beneath the surface. A
wound, sewn back up in Mapa de Lopo Homen [Map of Lopo Homen], 1992, embodiment of the sensual
which makes painting an object of desire and indicates the literary background of this artist who has read
Bataille and Sade.
The bodyfragmented, maimed, tattooedis often present in Adriana Varejos works. In the saunas
series, imposing oils on canvas that explore questions intrinsic to painting, it is alluded to metaphorically. Blue,
grey, white, yellow: the saunas are basically monochromatic, but nuanced by light and shadows that bring
out volumes and create a space that is labyrinthine, interiorized, virtual. Suggesting places of pleasure and sensuality that are traditionally lined with a skin of tilebaths, hammans, poolsas well as Carioca botequims 2, these paintings are for the artist moments of pure painting, a cosa mentale.
In 2003, Adriana Varejo participated in the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest at the Fondation
Cartier. The forthcoming exhibition Echo Chamber 3 embraces the many diverse facets of her work. Exploring,
through her themes, the cultural identity of Brazil, she has developed a modus operandi that makes her one of
the most astonishing pictorial artists on the international contemporary art scene today.

Adriana Varejo was born in 1964. She lives in Rio de Janeiro

1. The title Celacanto provoca maremoto refers to a mysterious graffiti that could be found on the walls of Rio de Janeiro
at the end of the 1970s. The coelacanth is a prehistoric fish that still lives in the waters off of the coast of Africa.
2. Bars with tile-covered walls, very popular in Rio.
3. The title Echo Chamber is taken from Severo Sarduys essay Barroco.

The exhibition Adriana Varejo, Echo Chamber

is organized with support from the Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporain,
under the aegis of the Fondation de France,
and with the sponsorship of Cartier.

Catalogue
Adriana Varejo, Chambre dchos/Echo Chamber
Hardback, bilingual French-English, 112 pages,
Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporain, Paris/Actes Sud, Arles
22 x 28 cm, 40 color illustrations approx.
Publication: March 18, 2005
Text: Philippe Sollers
Price: 30

Press information
Linda Chenit
Tel +33 (01) 42 18 56 77
Fax +33 (01) 42 18 56 52
linda.chenit@fondation.cartier.com
images on line: fondation.cartier.com

O Sedutor [The Seducer] (detail), 2004

Adriana Varejo
Collection of contemporary art of the la Caixa foundation, Barcelona
Photo Vicente de Mello

261, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris tel + 33 (1) 42 18 56 50 fax + 33 (1) 42 18 56 52 fondation.cartier.com