25/10/24 — 17/02/25
Gallery 1. Level -1
A key figure in the Brazilian art scene of the late 20th century, Tunga (Palmares, 1952 – Rio de Janeiro, 2016) was part of a prolific generation of creators who followed in the footsteps of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. His career spanned a variety of techniques and mediums, through which he developed sculptures, installations, videos, performances, and drawings. Tunga's work, infused with literary, philosophical, and scientific references (such as mathematics, entomology, and medicine), incorporates mythology, fiction, and alchemical processes as central elements of his poetics.
The installation Me, You and the Moon is one of the last works Tunga created and belongs to the Sarina Tang Collection.. The installation reflects his interest in archaeology, manifested through objects that register a kind of visual and molecular memory preceding human existence. For the artist, the presence of a fossilized tree trunk serves as a testament to nature before the colonizing presence of humans. It also constitutes a metaphor for the suspension of time; its hollowed-out form suggests the presence of a tunnel leading to a somatic perspective of reality, hinted at in some of the anticipatory drawings of this piece. The prehistoric water in crystal bottles also symbolizes the elixir of time.
Tunga's perspective on the coexistence of the organic and the artificial is also present in this work, through references to a metaphysical conception of corporeality. His fragmentary bodies—in this case, the patinated bronze sculptures representing thumbs—evoke the living as part of the ethereal dimension of existence: "that body, which is fleeting, configures and reconfigures itself according to our desire, according to the law of the continuity of desires," the artist once said. Me, You and the Moon stands as a key piece in his career, as it consolidates his anticipatory contributions to a post-humanist narrative.
The exhibition is complemented by a 2015 documentary film named after the installation, along with a series of 36 drawings from the Tunga Institute that, serving as a programmatic portrait, reveal his work with lines and incorporate visual notions of transformation and continuity into his narratives.
Me, You and the Moon was first presented at the Centre d'Arts et de Nature, Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, in 2015, and from August 2023 to March 2024, it is on display at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo.
Curators: María Amalia García y Nancy Rojas.
Dossier
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Tunga
Antônio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão, known as Tunga, was born in 1952 in Palmares, Pernambuco, and lived and worked in Rio de Janeiro until his death in 2016.
He was the first contemporary artist to exhibit his work in the Louvre pyramid, and also participated in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale in 1982 and Documenta in Kassel in 1992. His work is part of the collections of MoMA in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, and the Tate Modern in London.
