OUTLAW, 2014
Museum of Art of Pampulha
In broad daylight, a flagrant offense attracts the curious eyes of the passer, caused by flashing lights that make shine the odd golden dust spreading throughout the floor. The scene shows what certainly should not be revealed. It makes up the ambience of the accident, allegedly occurred recently, a sprawled vehicle body turned into a spectacle by several spotlights directed to it, highlighting the overflowing presence of its load of glitter. Everything indicates that we are facing an unearthed smuggling, which makes us at the same time voyeurs and witnesses of that wrought crime. Noisy when invading the luxurious space of the former Pampulha Casino - a place of gambling, of unspeakable vices - this strange accident imposes its light and irony in the space where it happens.
The installation "Bandida" (Outlaw), presented in this 5th edition of Bolsa Pampulha by the São Paulo-born artist Flávia Bertinato, was mounted in its first version at Marília Razuk Gallery, São Paulo, being expanded and having its elements adapted into the space of Pampulha Art Museum. This adaptation allowed the activation of other dialogues, now with specific issues in this context that covers both historical aspects of the city of Belo Horizonte and the architectural conditions of the building, in addition to the relevant criticism about intrinsic characteristics of the context of art, their relations between circulation and the market. And moreover: recent developments of the country's political life are easily accessed, with all the irony and sarcasm that makes part of many other works of this artist, who is attentive to the everyday life but especially to her clandestine margins, margins of disguise, of falsity, of perversion. With reference to Rogério Sganzerla's movie, “O Bandido da Luz Vermelha” (The Red Light Bandit) (1968), inspired by the irreverent crimes of João Acácio Pereira da Costa, the installation "Bandida" proposes, in the words of the artist, "a representation of the representation, the disguise of the disguise" , shown by the eloquent scenario that highlights the vested flows between the marginal and the institutional.
The fiction will always be an important resource to point and provoke reflection about the real issues that often go unnoticed or that we prefer not to see and / or face. Whether staging, forging situations or putting focus on unusual everyday images in fictions made through arduous labor, Flávia Bertinato contaminates us, confronts us and mirrors us. Thus, from the residency lived during the five months of the Bolsa Pampulha Program in Belo Horizonte, we will still surely see the impact of new provocations brought about by the observation of this artist, always attentive to the wild power of the ordinary.
Elisa Campos
