Anton Steenbock
Janaina Wagner
Leonardo Stroka

The house built several decades ago in a narrow and small street of one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city of São Paulo has surely been through several transformations until turning into an ordinary warehouse – its social function over recent years. Set to be demolished, we seek a last appropriation, experimenting possibilities that have not yet inhabited it.

Initiating this activation process – which will last until the arrival of 2015 – three artists were invited to think the space through a relational exercise that would propose occupancy ideas while discussing its potential uses and transient condition. The works of Anton Steenbock, Janaina Wagner and Leonardo Stroka were conceived or rethought specifically to this context and uses the house itself as support to intervene with other meanings in what had been otherwise taken as  obsolete.

To overcome the apathy of this residential construction with an art show represents a challenge that may only be overcome by a forthright dialogue towards the exhibition space. Accordingly, the neutral and immaculate white cube model was avoided. Likewise, it was proposed to the participants a direction not be imposed as boring theoretical shackles: being a group exhibition comprised of artists with heterogeneous backgrounds, interests, research and productions, it is only natural to have an ever free narrative plot. Each artist was stimulated to subvert the corners of the house autonomously, without seeking a visual or formal proximity between the results. The cohesion came from the shared vigor with which they penetrated along there, in an aperture move able to launch new risks onto the site.

Germano Dushá

22/02/2014 – 23/03/2014