MARCELO CIDADE: O vento experimenta o que irá fazer com sua liberdade... (Wind modes in times of freedom...)
Marcelo Cidade (São Paulo, 1979) gained a wide international reputation based on his critical dialogue with the legacies of the Brazilian avant-gardes of the last century. His dystopian approach to the utopian ideas of different artistic groups and architectural tendencies spread in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro between the 1940s and 1970s, has created a panoply of iconic works of contemporary art that bring unresolved issues to the present by using new materials. Materiality is central to Cidade’s practice, which conveys typologies of design that represent a given urban fabric and its grey zones of tensions.
Cidade has developed a type of dysfunctional abstrac- tion in his sculptures, installations and bidimensional works that delves into the clashes between public policies and human behavior, one of the most difficult problems posited for architecture and urbanism. What kind of storefronts are typically used in Mexico? What are the colors that define Mexican culture? Or, how friendly is the build space design in relation to the creation of spaces for spontaneous interactions?
RGR is proud to present a comprehensive body of works by Marcelo Cidade including Ansiosa Ansiedade (2024) a new experimental sculpture specially conceived for the show that is based on a mechanism that functions like a Moebius strip. The artist appropriated a typical Mexican storefront window to create a continuous movement, a kinetic element, which contrasts with the delicacy of the pink hue used to paint its surface. He also added two distinctive colors to cover adjacent walls of the gallery to create a Barraganesque environment that frames and contains the piece. The work brings nuances, fragmentary images and sounds from Mexico City that summarize his poetic-political concerns about abstraction as both universal force and a space for the winds of freedom to blow.
Gabriela Rangel
MARCELO CIDADE (São Paulo, Brasil, 1979)
Through an often subversive and informal practice, Marcelo Cicade questions the ideals of modernist architecture, appropriates urban spaces, and, by means of various aesthetic operations, invents new idioms, constructing fresh and surprising spaces.
The intimate bond that, for Cidade, holds together art and life authorizes the artist to explore the continual oscillating flow between the social and the personal sphere. Comparing established social relations and values, Cidade creates works that express complex social conflicts and brings signs and situations from the street into art-specific spaces. The artist’s work emphasizes an encounter between art and society, without neglecting the discussion of language.
One of Cidade’s interests is the public space generated in the urban and technological flux of the surveillance society. The city is the privileged site of events, and it is here that the artist looks for his work materials. Streets, walls, flyovers, squares, and shutters are a challenge for his gaze.
He currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.