Tadeusz Kantor in a school desk from the Dead Class play, Kraków, 1988, photo: Włodzimierz Wasyluk Tadeusz Kantor’s monographic exhibition at the Sesc (Serviço Social do Comércio) in São Paulo will be showcased within the framework of actions preceding a presentation of Polish culture in Brazil which is planned to occur in 2016. Tadeusz Kantor Machine: Theater + happenings + performances + painting+others modes of production will be the biggest exhibition of Kantor’s artistic work in this country so far. Previously, his works were shown during the 1967 São Paulo Biennale, where he received a Prêmio Bienal de São Paulo award.
Kantor’s world, based on his ideas and manifestos, will be presented in the form of an exhibition at Sesc Consolação, one of the Sesc centres, where a special architectural structure will be built. The exhibition will comprise of paintings, drawings, drafts, installations and objects, as well as film documentaries, recordings from Kantor’s plays and abundant photographic documentation of his various artistic activities. The majority of the artistic works will be borrowed from the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and from the Cricoteka. Ricardo Muniz Fernandes, a sociologist, a publisher and a cultural producer from São Paulo, and Jarosław Suchan, an art historian and the director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, are the exhibition’s curators.
We’re observing a constantly increasing interest in Tadeusz Kantor in Brazil, which is however often restricted to, firstly, his theatrical works and, secondly, to the theoretical considerations of researchers. Academic works about Kantor’s legacy have already been and still are being written; take for instance the meaningfully titled doctoral dissertation of Wagner Cintra: At the Doorsteps of Unknown – Objects in Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre (2012). A collection of Kantor’s texts called The Theatre of Death prepared under Denis Bablet’s supervision, published by Perspectiva and Edições Sesc-SP in 2008, has greatly increased the knowledge of Brazilian researchers about the artist’s ideas. However, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to understand Kantor’s artwork based exclusively on theory. To experience the world of Kantor completely, one needs to have “physical contact” with his work, which is still alive, which operates within its own discourse, and, first of all, involves different types of art without defined boundaries between them. This is, from the curators’ point of view, the main objective of the Tadeusz Kantor Machine: Theater + happenings + performances + painting+others modes of production exhibition
– the organizers wrote.
Culture.pl 's exhibition partners are Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and Sesc São Paulo – the most important cultural, educational and social facility in Brazil.
Tadeusz Kantor Machine: Theater + happenings + performances + painting+others modes of production
Sesc Consolação, Rua Doutor Vila Nova, 245 – Vila Buarque, São Paulo, Brazil
18 August – 14 November 2015
Curators: Jarosław Suchan, Ricardo Muniz Fernandes
Exhibition’s architecture: Hideki Matsuka
Source: Culture.pl, oprac. AS, 27.01.2015
For more about Polish culture in Brazil, click HERE