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The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action. The great revolution introduced a new calendar.
The initial day of a calendar serves as a historical time-lapse camera.
- Walter Benjamin -
Since his adolescence, the artist Matheus Rocha Pitta has been collecting a series of newspaper clippings in an archive that currently contains an extensive amount of images. The Fool's Year (2017) was made from a selection from this vast personal archive, with photos of demonstrations that took place in several cities around the World, which, because of "Arab Spring" in 2010, became more common. The work was shown in Berlin, where the artist spent one year at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien residency. At the occasion, the calendar was exhibited, in an English version, translated as "The Fool's Year", such as the day 1st of April that is called "The Fool's Day".
In this work, the succession of images of protest is organized into twelve sections to form a calendar in which each of the 365 days of the year is represented by a clipping of some manifestation around the globe. But amidst this sense of familiarity, a subtle and important subversion is inserted: instead of the contestatory messages, the artist has introduced the inscription "April 1, 2017." So we are facing an entire year that becomes one and the same day. -
Matheus rocha pitta
The Fool's Year, 2017
365 recortes de jornais e 365 datas impressas sobre papel japonês (365 newspaper photographs and 365 printed dates pasted on Japonese paper)
57,5 x 77,5 cm cada (22.6 x 30.5 in each) -
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Each and every day is represented by a newspaper photograph of protesters holding posters, banners or flags, whose specific political claim I carefully removed and substituted, early this morning, by the date April 1st, just as it is freshly printed in today's newspapers. These images come from my own archive, which I feed almost every day with newspaper photographs. I love the language of protest, one doesn't need to agree with its content to love it. I have been collecting such pictures for almost eight years, regardless of their political claim, regardless of their place and date. It is an archive of gestures, of pure "mediality" without "finality".
So today you see 365 images of protest, 365 days of the past that claim nothing other than the awareness of today. For to be regarded as a fool is only a matter of being out of time, of breaking the clocks, as Benjamin cites in his 15th thesis on the concept of history: -
Who would have believed it!
We are told that new Joshuas at the foot of every tower,
as though irritated with
time itself, fired at the dials
in order to stop the day.
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In addition to the compression of time, or the crystallization of time, we witness the withdrawal of the content of messages from the cries to emphasize the characteristic language of the protests, as well as the repertoire of gestures there - arms raised, crowds, numerous faces that become a single uniform mass. “Matheus seeks precisely to "stop time," to establish an interruption, and with the same move, to stop a certain narrative”, mentions Luisa Duarte in her curatorial text in 2017.
The first day of April, as we all know, is recognized as the Fool’s Day in Brazil. As Rocha Pitta affirms, “the first of April isn’t only the fools day, but also the day in which the truth and the lie get mixed up. If we live in a time of post-truth then we live in an eternal first of April”. Less than a choice in the face of the binary relationship truth vs. lie, "April 1, 2017" establishes an area of uncertainty. -
Matheus Rocha Pitta was awarded the Illy Sustain Art Award (2008 - Madrid, Spain). He participated in the 9th Bienal de Taipei (2014 - Taipei, China) and the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010 - São Paulo, Brazil). His work is part of public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil) and the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (Torino, Italy).
Among his main solo exhibitions are: 2020 - The Curfew Sirens (Kunstverein in Hamgurg - Hamburg, Germany); 2019 - Primeira Pedra e Acordo (Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - São Paulo, Brazil); 2018 - No Caminho da Pedra (Espaço Cultural BNDES - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Memória Menor (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); 2017 - O Reino do Céu (Galeria Athena - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); 2015 - Primeira Pedra (Mendes Wood DM - São Paulo, Brazil); 2012 - L'Accordo, (Fondazione Morra Greco - Napoli, Italy); among others.
Among his main group exhibitions are: 2018 - Com o ar pesado demais pra respirar (Galeria Athena - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Estructuras Vivientes. Ritos sin mitos en el arte contemporáneo - XIV Bienal de Cuenca (Cuenca, Ecuador); 2017 - Yoko Ono: The Sky is Still Blue, You Know… (Instituto Tomie Ohtake - São Paulo, Brazil); 2016 - The Pagad (Galleria Massimo de Carlo - Milan, Italy); 2014 - Si No Todas las Armas, los Cañones (Matadero Madrid - Madrid, Spain); 140 Caracteres - (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - São Paulo, Brazil); 2013 - Collective Fictions (Palais de Tokyo - Paris, France); 2011 - Rendez Vous 11 (Institut d'Art Contemporain - Lyon, France);among others.