Transmigration
Transmigration
3rd individual exhibition (2016)
In his fifth individual exhibition, Arnaldo Dias Baptista shares with the public for the first time many of his visual artworks and some of his biographic documents from his open archive: drawings, paintings, collages, assemblages, sheet music, solo albums, personal objects, textile pieces, photographs, videos, printed media articles, a set of handwritten manuscripts, and a rich collection of graphic material about his artistic career, which began in the 1960s and remains strongly meaningful to this day.
“Transmigration”, the title of this show, is a word borrowed from a musical piece by Clarisse Leite Dias Baptista, Arnaldo’s mother, who was a pianist, concert performer, and composer. The recording date is unknown, but it was made in tetraphonic stereo inside the Petrof grand piano in the family residence on Venâncio Ayres Street, in Pompeia District, São Paulo city, and mixed for two channels a posteriori.
Etymologically, the term comes from the Latin word transmigrare and is based on the notion that the soul can migrate from one body to another, which can be human, animal or unanimated. This life concept is seen in tribal cultures from different regions of the planet, such as certain peoples in Africa, indigenous peoples in South America and aborigines in Oceania.
It is also found in hermetic and occultism books, retrieved during the formation of the European Renaissance thinking and, therefore, simultaneous to the practices of Christianity and Judaism at the time. The interest in the idea is resumed when it is related to the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece, especially to the currentness of Plato and Pythagorean studies.
The exhibition presents various aesthetic practices: drawings alluding to a motorcycle trip Baptista took with a friend to the United States in the early 1970s; formulas from his spontaneous and astronomy studies; typography tests and lettering he created; a set of postcards with which he participated in the mail art network; plastic works that refer to song titles and album covers; a series of hand-painted t-shirts made in the 1990s; jackets he used in concerts in the 1960s; promotional photos and album covers; posters from United Kingdom and Unites States tours when the band Os Mutantes reunited in the 2000s; an ephemerous invitation and flyer collection of important concerts he did throughout his career as a musician; booths in which the public can listen to his solo records; and a complete media dossier available for handling, containing clipping of how national and international media has been communicating the career of genius Arnaldo Dias Baptista.
With “Transmigration”, despite being a mere team project, we have always been Baptista’s fans. In the art world, having immemorial respect and admiration for an artist is not often seen as a positive aspect. Since Baptista is someone whom we have known for a long time, we recognise his gestures and signs of fight and resistance against the censorship and the limitation of citizen rights during the harshest period of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. But, mainly, we recognize how he faced the destructive and reckless disregard shown by friends and professionals of his generation who have never tolerated his talent, brilliancy, madness and free spirit – and precisely him who has always been, and still is, this absolutely radical artist. Historical irresponsibility, quite the contrary of what some would like to think, is not a hypothesis and definitely will not be a choice. To make what was set and proposed fully happen in life, with the purest energy of the visual culture of rock, this exhibition also refers to encounters – of when a certain artistic force hits us. When we find it, we’ll never want to lose it from our sight again.
The exhibit of some of Arnaldo Dias Baptista’s works and documents contains, in its essential strength, magnetism and nature – which coexist in the studios of the visual artist and of the musician and his fascinating order and style: accumulative, anachronic, and timeless. Sound & Vision. Arnaldo, with his undeniable charisma as the President of the Association of the Tube Amplifiers Owners, ultidimensionally shares with us and with his countless fans the exhibition environment “Transmigration” which, perchance, remains, perhaps and still, healthily uncatchable, away from the ulterior motives of the art system’s commercial speculation.
Márcio Harum (curator)
3rd individual exhibition “Transmigration”
May, 14 to July, 17 – 2016
Hotsite > https://transmigracao.com.br/
