Marcelo Cidade

RGR Gallery presents the exhibition O vento experimenta o que ira fazer com sua liberdade, by renowned artist Marcelo Cidade (São Paulo, 1979) and curated by Gabriela Rangel. It is a profound reflection on the interaction between architecture, public space and the social tensions that define our contemporary urban environment.

In O vento experimenta o que ira fazer com sua liberdade, Cidade explores the utopian legacies of 20th century architecture and urbanism and contrasts them with the complexities of public space in the context of surveillance societies. Through sculptures, installations and conceptual art, the artist examines how the urban fabric reflects the inherent tensions between collective ideals and dystopian reality. His work is characterized by the use of materials such as glass, cement and reclaimed objects, which encapsulate urban life and its conflicts.

The piece entitled Ansiosa Ansiedade (2024), reinterprets abstraction as a means of resistance against the dynamics of urban control. Inspired by the architecture of Luis Barragan and the typical storefront design of Mexico City, Cidade creates a kinetic work that symbolizes the constant tension between control and freedom. Distinctive colors and visual and sound fragments of the city frame an immersive experience that invites the viewer to reflect on public space as a symbolic battlefield.

Marcelo Cidade has gained international recognition for his incisive critique of the legacy of modernist architecture and its impact on urban politics. His work Tempo suspenso de un estado provisorio (2011), part of the collection of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), is a prime example of how Cidade challenges traditional museographic conventions, repositioning art as a political window into reality.

This piece underscores the contradictions between utopian ideals and dystopian reality, a theme that permeates all his work.

On her behalf, curator Gabriela Rangel highlights how Marcelo Cidade accurately captures the fractures that emerge between failed collective aspirations and the material culture that inhabits urban spaces, both in São Paulo and Mexico City. O vento experimenta o que ira fazer com sua liberdade invites the viewer to reflect on public space and artistic intervention as a poetic-political space where tensions unfold between the personal and the collective, the past and the present, and where abstraction becomes a vehicle for freedom.

–Galería RGR

Gallery participating in GAMA WEEK from September 19 to 22, 2024:
Thursday-Saturday 11am-7pm
Sunday 11am-4pm