Sobre natureza

Pedro Motta

12.05.2016 — 11.06.2016

About Nature

In his third solo show at the Silvia Cintra + Box 4 gallery, Pedro Motta proposes a new disruption on his research about the thin line between natural elements and human behavior, its misunderstandings, convergences and its relations. In a large installation, produce of his residency in Colombia in 2015, at Flora Arts + Natura, Motta develops a narrative between two series from his works. He creates a dialogue with photographic images and pencil drawings where the actor Klaus Kinski plays two iconic characters in Werner Herzog’s films: Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Aguirre and the wrath of the gods (1972).

These two characters, adventurous and explorers, go inside the Amazonian territory with very different reasons in mind, but with a determination close to delirious. Digitally assembled in Honda’s landscape and the surroundings of Bogota, they seem to point to the intrinsic hardship that every explorer (the artist included) has to comprehend a so unchartered territory without falling into the trap of exoticism. On top of these photos other frames with artificial plants, all covered in black, suggesting then a situation of imprisonment and claustrophobia.
He creates then, a narrative of two different stories, from different times, but with the intention of converging and discussing actions coming from nature transformation, its boundaries and its potential.

Falência (Collapse) #2, 2016 is a triptych with images of three different types of erosion caused by the rain. Its shapes come from a hidden time where nature shows its strength and beauty through destruction. At this stage of the work, the earth is totally lacking structure, thus creating a “sculptural suture”. To finalize the image, he applies the same technique used in his other series “Confined space” where he inserts small amounts of earth inside the frame. If in “Confined space” the feeling of claustrophobia and confinement was evident, in “Collapse #2”, the superficial space of the photo seems to fall away to a place in the infinity field, a kind of an hourglass.

On the other hand, “Transposed landscape” is made up by different images of natural landscape modified by the action of men. Small branches of trees link these spaces. In the show, these pieces have the intention to link two specific series, “Collapse #2” and “Sinkhole”.Made up by 12 images, though only 8 are on view at the show, the series “Sinkhole”, is a metaphor to the space where it was conceived, the Death River – an important river at Campo das Vertentes region (in the state of Minas Gerais), famous by the gold mining stories and territorial battles. These series are an attempt to reflect upon sculptural structures inserted on a fantastic landscape, creating a dichotomy between a bucolic, almost romantic place, with digitally manipulated insertions of sinkholes. Lacking a real function before our eyes, these structures end up obsolete by time and space.

A small piece entitled “Strange fruit” serves as the finale to the show. From a referential and affectionate nature, the image comes from a distant memory of the artist when he used to visit the grotto region of Lapinha, an important Brazilian archaeological site also in Minas Gerais. On the way there, there was a lady that made sweets, Mrs. Lora, who used to decorate small trees from the Brazilian savannah with eggshells, from eggs she used in her sweets. This outstanding image, filled with memories and symbolism ends up as an attempt to bring to the fictional collective a long gone time.