Affluents of sign

Serei um dia simples
Sereno por excesso
Conciso barroco
Declina o silêncio
Sempre terá sido jamais.
Ronaldo Brito
em Quarta do singular, Duas cidades, São Paulo,1989.

The space has been, since the beginning of the modern art, an element to be taken in consideration when you think in an expositive project.There are many example, like the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, na Galerie Beaux-Arts, in Paris, 1947 and the “Salon de Madame B.à Dresden” of Mondrian. In the Brazilian context, the Project Wall of the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo, the windows of the “Beatriz Milhazes exhibition:
painting, collage”, in the Estação Pinacoteca and the recent exhibition of Cildo Meirelles and Artur Bairro, among others, showing that this though was already consolidated.
Angella Conte, in a production literally contemporary, she creates her work as installations. Each of her work rests in terms of material and formal, as it incorporates the spatial context in which it inserts. In a selection of work that took into account, especially, the adequacy of the available exhibition space, the exhibition “Da Nascente à Foz” [From the Riverhead to the Mouth], in the Forestal Museum Octavio Vecchi, resume, as in a piece of the whole, this characteristic of the artist.
The configuration of the stylistic and conceptual work of Conte tell us the size of rigorous and thorough use of sophisticated features that lead us to a journey whose origin dates back to the beginning of Art History.
The artist, moving through various artistic styles, explores different media. Initially the picture and, soon, the sculpture and the video, always focused on the design.
The exhibition at the ground floor of the Forestal Museum Octavio Vecchi and one of the lakes at the park raises a concern of the Museum creator. If, in his case, the concern was with deforestation – what took him to consider ways to reduce the environmental impacts – in the exhibition “Da Nascente à Foz” the artist’s goal is to present, through the work shown, the concern about the conservation of the water reserve of the planet.
The artist, who has a systematic research on the various stages of cognitive and temporal spiral, use these elements when setting up their manifestos (read works of art).It is observed in her work, resonance discourse (speech and debate) the nature of the relationship between natural life and dead, through a representation of gender "still life", which emphasizes the procedures or intervals between two states. By placing in a expography context, either two dimensional or three dimensional, elements and others from Museum grounds, the artist moves the discussion on the field of the art properly.

In the work Silence branches and roots of trees “invade” the grades. In the pictures, there is an answer from de nature to the men action: a kind of silent protest for their freedom, for life, subjectively represented by one of the most discussed and contemporary artistic languages. Even the metals, extracted from nature, rebels, as a result of a disastrous enterprise of the men, which is reversed against himself. The work can be seen from any side of the room, in a context where the other work on display interacts with it, as part of the whole. Each piece of the work acts like a support to the other, generating a process without beginning or end.
A video of the Piracicaba River, beyond its meaning "immediate present", in itself, establishes a connection from recent work of the artist who occupies this floor of the Museum. The projection of the flow of the river challenges the viewer by creating a game between the absence and presence. Absence of the river that is not quite there, but appears only represented by a succession of images. A river that now exists, but may don’t exist tomorrow, becoming a dual metaphor for the present and future. The blue lights hanging from the ceiling, and whose reflection appears in the circle of mirrors on the floor, also allude to the shadows and light, instant recall of the body, but this time mixed with light, projection, joy, guilt and desires. The place and the non-place, the presence and absence are concepts to be evaluated in the show. 
The projection appears as a denial of the dissolution of the past, as if it was presented at that time. It is conceived as a literal origin, a start from scratch, a birth, as the source of the memory, which brings us to the moving image.
The film becomes a metaphor on organismic not so much a formal invention, but the sources of life. Allows us to establish an absolute distinction between this "almost" tried and a past full of memories and tradition. The intervention in the lake has elements with the same symbolic significance of the record of the river in the video. These similarities make the vision of a whole new meaning and, metaphorically, a discussion on contemporary art, actually, the use of common elements of everyday life. Added to this other question, no less contemporary, which is environmental conservation, in the specific case, the concern with the end of the water reserves of the planet. Through it also shows a discussion of socio-political background, rarely seen in contemporary Brazilian artistic production.
In this concern, this is also a relationship between the color works, a game between the elements "invaders" and which constitute the elements of the local context: trees, plants, animals, water and the white cube of the modern exhibition space. The artist makes these elements fall in the conceptual discussion of the proposal.
Establishes a figure-ground relationship in which the elements already existing and new alternate indiscriminately, disputing the philosophical categories already mentioned: space and time.

There is a contemporary understanding of space and time the extent to which ideas and objects, designed to time and different ways, establish a relationship timeless in content and form. These procedures provide for the refusal to the identification, classification and distinction. In fact, there are no limits. It is as if the representation of the river in the video, on the ground floor was converted into an object such as salts and minerals that are mixed into the water and break up any definition are placed side by side.
The basins of aluminum, in one of the artificial lakes of the woods, give a warm welcome to visitors. Objects out of place and inserted in a space anachronistic cause the visitor a strangeness of the place. There is a symbolism in the set, which leads to this strange, but at the same time, allows the association with the interference human being and many interventions in natural contexts.
Brightness that are related to the classification of the legendary and universal plenty of power. Metaphor of possibilities and power. A power referred to the ignorance and carelessness. Metal and water. Soluble or not? Water: pure or polluted? Metal on water: the power shortage on the water, and plenty of limits. And the river at the same time symbolize shortage. There is, symbolically, a game of power and distance, fantasy and reality that can become melancholy.
In this case, the inaccessibility of the basins, bring a message that runs away from its usual protective function, limiting them spatial and practically. It is a synonymous of alert. A call to reflection. Objects that, out of context and with its role transferred to non-place, they gain a new symbolic value that this time, and the place where they were inserted, warn us about how our actions can still prevent a disaster.
At the same time, here, the relationship with the landscape will generate discussion in relation to "interference" in the experiences, memories of everyone who visits the place with personal references, allowing the insertion of each one, based on these personal experiences in approach and interpretation of the artist's proposals.
In the installation Fonte, the photography is explored in some of its possibilities: as the twodimensional representation and the incorporation of three-dimensionality in the case of use of the backlight. The representation of a dry fountain reminds us of the sense of absence. Failure to neutralize its function, which justifies its use. Without water, the fountain becomes useless, unnecessary. An object without function and meaning.
In the video Environment I , four scenes revolve in a clockwise direction on the image of an
uncontrollable and incalculable mass of people. The artist, in the reverse process, her hair - that was wet - dry, consistent with the melting of an iceberg of the poles, one private and one bath. Here, reality is represented as full of potential situations and time of memories is not necessarily the past. There is a representation of the environment in the work of Conte, as well as a systemic symbolism in the work of the artist, in whatever media she uses.

In the pictures EntrePlanos, Serra da Cantareira, images of a unique beauty and infinite allow us to see the most cruel acts of man over nature, the result of excessive growth of the metropolis of Sao Paulo. The result that metaphorically grows as trees grow for supporting natural of the land and especially in contact with water. In this case, the product are of concrete and steel, are the pollution and the gray. If the pictorial representation of the artist contains an indisputable truth, the reality is an attack without limits on Mother Earth. The contours of the Sierra dilute the limits of buildings and structures that stand as spiral of invasion, showing a balance of power and antagonism visual and scenic.
But there is hope in the representation, Conte caught in Planet Earth the rising sun repeatedly at different intervals of time and space. Another time, the dawn presents static, in wooden boxes, as a relic.
In Brazil, unlike the vast majority of Latin Americans, the art of social protest is limited to short and sporadic periods. Few artists and curators reflect or discuss the issue. Conte, however, brings up the discussion on the theme of the environment with a social bias that transcends local boundaries in the discussion of a theme with universal overtones.
In each of the works of Conte, is in evidence, one a way or another, the singularity, authenticity, uniqueness and originality, setting in each project, a direct connection to the original moment in which the result becomes a reflection of empirical and semiological. In this way, the meaning intended by the artist becomes the condition of repeating the same meaning and thus, in every meaning is implied a prior decision to convert it into a vehicle sign.
The uniqueness of each piece is linked to images that are successively represented, as well as the way in which these images are recorded in our imagination: not in static, but through a constant and uninterrupted replenishment. This uniqueness is based on the recognition of the viewer at the moment of perception, with reference to image a live object, or even in the presence of this object. The exhibition, therefore, shows that works, even separated by proposals, together create a single chain and organic discussion and awareness.

Andrés I. M. Hernández
Curator and art critic
Sao Paulo in February 2009