Desali: Beast Skin: Beast skin
Galeria Athena is glad to present the exhibition Pele Fera, by Desali.
A work exploring multiple media, Pele Fera gathers works by Brazilian artist Desali, born in the state of Minas Gerais, created between 2019 and 2020. To promote an interchange between the streets and exhibition spaces, two sets of works are proposed by the artist at Galeria Athena. Paintings, photographs, objects and a video installation subvert both artistic and social hierarchies.
The first set, displayed at the Casa Room, is the video installation Projeto Óleo de Tijolo: Lamarca Coletas (Brick Oil Project: Lamarca Collections). At the Varanda Room, this work unfolds into a video and a set of paintings that show the artist’s attentive eye on his surroundings, friends, city waste, daily scenes that shed light on the conceptual and formal investigation done by Desali.
Based on a research inspired by the history of former Army captain and guerilla Carlos Lamarca (1937-1971), who deserted and became one of the leaders of the armed resistance against the Brazilian dictatorship begun in 1964. Desali devised the video installation comprising a table and school desks, a projection, a sound instrument and objects made of homemade soap and clay. The proposal was to create a “guerilla” school where guests – then, students from the cities of Resende and Barra Mansa, both in the state of Rio de Janeiro – could create their own defense artifacts to fight and subvert what the artist referred to as “the setback that currently affects Brazil, by taking up arms and creating shields against obscurantism.”
Desali created the projection based on the movie Lamarca (1994), by director Sérgio Rezende, that tells about the last years of the former Army captain’s life. Contemporary images and sounds are added to this history and unfold into current contexts involving struggles and resistance. The Projeto Óleo de Tijolo: Lamarca Coletas also inspired a new series of paintings that refer to the artist’s life in his native neighborhood in the outskirts of Contagem (MG), in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, as well as it serves to retrieve the identity memory of that community.
The video installation Projeto Óleo de Tijolo: Lamarca Coletas results from the artist’s participation, in November 2019, in the artistic residency SILO – Art and Rural Latitude in Resende, where the Agulhas Negras Military Academy is also located.
Desali’s partner in other works, filmmaker Affonso Uchoa says that Desali is that sort of artist to whom thoughts are primarily a gesture and politics, a perspective. In this project at Galeria Athena, Desali’s work is also a reflection on the present times and a call for a collective action.
The way the exhibition title ‘Pele Fera’ is pronounced in Portuguese resembles the word ‘periphery’. This enriches Desali’s work, focused on the ‘outside in movement’ – or from the streets into the gallery -, and is present throughout his works.
