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New Power: Passability is the gallery’s debut exhibition in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro, with free admission
Open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 2 pm to 8 pm, the Maxwell Alexandre Pavilion was inaugurated to the public on April 4th. Alexandre, who is very prominent in Brazilian visual art of this generation, comments that the space was created with the intention of having greater flexibility in the exhibition of his work.
The inaugural exhibition, on display until June 4, portrays black people in art contemplation spaces – historically intended for white people – such as museums and galleries. His works, painted in large dimensions on brown paper, are displayed hanging around the gallery’s shed. New Power: Passability is an offshoot of the artist’s first solo exhibition in Spain, presented in March of this year at the Centro Cultural La Casa Encedida, in Madrid.
The choice of the name of Maxwell Alexandre’s gallery also draws attention because it ties together plots that surround the artist. the term Pavilion identifies in contemporary art, in particular, a model of exhibition of great proportions and in the pavilions of the Inhotim Institute, for example, the spaces are dedicated to hosting exhibitions whose works pass through the institution’s scrutiny.
The artist makes his Pavilion also a temple for his work. In the social networks of the space, the word “church” is commonly used as the initial vocative of the subtitles. Not coincidentally, the domain that hosts the gallery’s website is pavilhao.faith. Alexandre, aware of his large production volume, sees in his “chapel” a space to exhibit more than just his finished works, but also his productions in development and his creative process in a way that is more detached from the limits of the art market and placed beyond the limits of art. official circuit of contemporary art.
The space, inaugurated a few months following the artist asked Inhotim to remove “Quilombo: life, problems and aspirations of the black” the work ‘untitled’, from the series “Novo Poder” (2021), is also a critical approach to the treatment that established institutions give to the work of black artists. Maxwell Alexandre’s critical perspective extends to how media outlets deal with the work of these artists. A recent episode moved the debate with an article in Folha de S. Paulo that refers to the artist as a “black artist” who “attacks” Inhotim by requesting the removal of the work from the exhibition. The choice of this vehicle to hide the artist’s name and reduce it to a racial term demonstrates the way in which the press hierarchizes the dissemination of information between black and white people. Folha de S. Paulo changed the title of the article in which it reported the artist’s discussion with Inhotim following Alexandre’s manifestation – which, in turn, exposed the original title of the article in a painting presented at the 19th SP-ARTE last month March.
A critical view permeates Alexandre’s work. your series brown is paper – presented in a homonymous itinerant exhibition of major institutions in Brazil such as Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Fundação Iberê Camargo and MAR – explores the term “pardo” which refers both to the paper he uses in his works and to the category of racialization of black people in Brazil , much more focused on their physical characteristics than their ancestry. The artist sees in the category a way of erasing the black identity in the Brazilian population. New Power, continuing the work of the artist, turns the criticism of his work towards the erasure of the black presence in the “temples of contemplation” of art. Alexandre’s work and his positions poke, criticize and tension even the most subtle details of white hegemony over visual and written language.
Matheus Paiva is a cultural producer and internationalist, graduated from the University of São Paulo.
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