Ricardo Basbaum: Membranosa-Entre NBP

Luciana Brito Galeria is inaugurating an exhibition by visual artist Ricardo Basbaum with the never-before-shown installationmembranosa-entre (NBP) [membranous-between (NBP)], which the artist has developed exclusively for this space, for his first solo show at the gallery. Basbaum has returned to São Paulo after an absence of eight years, presenting a steel structure in the form of a corridor occupying the exhibition room’s main circulation area. This structure is at the same time “sculpture” and “architecture,” and can be occupied and walked through, proposing an experience which is simultaneously sensible, sensorial and conceptual.

Dominating the space of the gallery, Ricardo Basbaum’s corridor-like structure sets up a 50-centimeter-wide niche along the right wall, where the first text is found. The visitors are invited to walk along the corridor, encountering various obstacles in the form of doors or barriers that can at times hinder their free movement or set them on new paths. A first door – which offers the visitor the option of going through it or not – leads directly to the diagram. Three benches with cushions and pillows project from the structure; a second door and two obstacles are situated inside the corridor. Four closed-circuit cameras will be installed in the environment, linked with an image projector located in the video room on the second floor, allowing the visitor to enhance his/her perception of the spaces within the installation, based on the framings proposed.

The structure opens up at two places, where the visitor can sit down, converse and look at the surrounding space. The installation is complemented by a diagram on the left wall, as well as a second text on the wall at the back – both of which are directly articulated with the architectural/sculptural structure, indicating to the viewer ways of relating with the elements present in the installation. The visitors can use the benches, covered with cushions/pillows, and move about freely throughout the metallic architectural/sculptural structure.

The mezzanine will feature a second work by Ricardo Basbaum: a drawing in the form NBP is applied to the floor, and the visitors can walk over it. This situation is captured by another four closed-circuit cameras; in this case the images will be transmitted to a small monitor placed on the mezzanine near the drawing.

NBP – Novas Bases para a Personalidade

Since 1990, Ricardo Basbaum has been developing the projectNBP – Novas Bases para a Personalidade [NBP – New Bases for Personality], concerning transformational processes and communicative strategies: it is “an investigation into the involvement of the other as a participant in a set of protocols indicative of the effects, conditions and possibilities of contemporary art,” pointing to a collectivization of knowledge and to the production of an open and collective thought. One of the aspects of the project the artist finds most interesting is the “production of asymmetry between the proposer and a participant: the roles never coincide, thus producing a relation of dialogue, questioning and mutual provocations, aimed at an “infinite conversation.” Ricardo Basbaum is interested in bringing about an inversion of roles: although the artist is initially positioned as a proposer, who offers the object to the participant, provoking him/her – as occurs in his project Você gostaria de participar de uma experiência artística? [Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?] – when the experiment is realized it is the participant who becomes the proposer, producing thoughts and provoking a repositioning of the artist, who then seeks to process the experience realized, becoming a participant who accepts being provoked.

The series includes the projects NBP x eu-você [NBP x I-you] (MAM-RJ, 2000, Galeria São Paulo, 2001, an installation acquired by the Tate Collection in 2003), passagens (NBP)[passages (NBP)] (Galeria Artur Fidalgo, Rio de Janeiro, 2001),Transatravessamento [Transcrossing] (25th Bienal de São Paulo, 2002), Você gostaria de participar de uma experiência artística? (in progress since 1994 and presented at documenta 12, Kassel, 2007) and me-you + system-cinema + passageway (NBP) (7th Shanghai Biennale, 2008).