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Cildo Meireles
1 9 4 8 R i o D e J a n e i r o
Cildo Meireles is one of Brazil ’s most important and widely
acclaimed artists.A pioneer of installation art since the sixties,his
oeuvre also includes drawings,sculptures and objects.Particularly
significant are his extremely unusual and poetic walk-in environments,geared
to kindle the spectator ’s full sensorial and intellectual
awareness.Paying close attention to sensual qualities,Meireles
works with nearly scientific precision and minimalist polish.Aiming
to expose and at the same time offer alternate worlds to our numbing,estranged
reality,his art is endowed with strong
symbolic and political content.
Fontes,1992,shown at Documenta IX,was an environment with 7000
yellow rulers hanging from the ceiling and 200 non-synchronized
clocks on the walls.Others are markedly sensorial and incorporate
sound,fire and smells:Volatile,1980/84,was produced with ash,candles
and the odour of natural gas,while the installation/action The
Sermon of the Mount,1973/79,made use of 126,000 matches,mirrors
and five actors.The artist creates the conditions whereby the
spectator –who is totally immersed in the work –can
grasp its meaning through direct physical
experience.In other works,for example Incursions in ideological
circuits (from 1970),he slips symbolic viruses into the standardized
circuit of production,writing denunciatory comments on banknotes
or substituting the label on Coca Cola bottles with “Yankee
go Home!”and then putting them back into circulation.
For Documenta XI in 2002,Meireles produced a work entitled Disappearing
Element/Disappeared Element (Imminent Past),which combines a critical
vision of the system of the exchange of goods and an urgent call
to consider the progressive deterioration of the environment.He
made ice lollies out of drinking water,and organized mobile sales
points in various
locations around the city.The vendors were recognizable because
they had coloured carts,and the proceeds from sales went directly
to them.With this work,Meireles alludes to the growing shortage
of water on the planet and invites us to reflect on the relations
between art and the market,on the notions of use value and exchange
value,where the only effective action of dissent must necessarily
be the disappearance of the object itself.
For Arte all ’Arte,Meireles found the ideal location for
his work in a vegetable garden very close to the historic city
centre.It is a quiet space,an oasis of tranquillity run by the
Orto dei Pecci community,which for many years now has been helping
people with psychological difficulties.
In this context,tending a collective vegetable garden is a concrete
opportunity to do work that encourages responsibility and demands
attention and respect for the rhythms of nature;these rhythms
follow a pattern that is very different to the fast pace of tourism,which,besides
anything else,is literally devouring the art cities.
Avignonesi Vino Nobile di Montepulciano
2000, 13 %
Over two third of Prugnolo Gentile (another Sangiovese clone),
some Canaiolo nero and a splash of Mammolino are the very traditional
variety of the Avignonesi’s Nobile, one of the most highly
renowned of this appellation.
Half of the wine is matured in big oak cask and the other half
in barriques, before the assemblage and the final six moths of
bottle ageing.
A lively garnet colour and a very fruity character, with black
cherries, dry herbs and a delicate floral touch. It is a very
expressive wine with a wonderful degree of complexity. On the
palate the black cherries are still dominating, followed by black
berries, elegant smokey and tobacco leaves notes well associated
to sweet and fine tannins. With an exceptional high drinkable
and harmonic character, this wine is full of surprises.
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