Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and Philippe Van Snick
Conceived for two unique spaces of modernist Brazilian architecture – the Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio), in Rio de Janeiro, and the Casa Modernista, in São Paulo –, the exhibitions of the artists Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (b. 1977, Barcelona, Spain) and Philippe Van Snick (b. 1946, Ghent, Belgium) are mainly intended to underline the dualism and simultaneity in the work of both. The project is fruit of an institutional partnership between MAM RJ and the Museu da Cidade/Prefeitura de São Paulo that aims to reinforce the curatorial networks and collaboration between both institutions.
The central element of MAM’s exhibition is the presentation of works by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and by Philippe Van Snick on top of a set of wooden tables, approximation both both artists. For Marta Mestre, curator of the show, the tables “turn intro three-dimensional the syntax of geometry and the display that both artists share”. Amidst this group of works, Mangrané presents his “Table with objects”, composed of several work objects that the artist has been gathering between 1998 and 2015. Van Snick displays about 20 works, including photos, watercolours, drawings and maquettes from the 1970s, and recent pieces, produced between 2011 and 2015.
Both of the artists also made interventions in the panels of MAM Rio. Van Snick created a painting in situ, exploring the relation between the museum’s architecture of the gardens designed by Burle Marx. Mangranépresents “Morfogenesis Cripsis” (2015), a mixed media work with watercolours and drawing, where the artist juxtaposes organic and geometric forms, and “Fôlego” (2014), an installation, developed with flutist Joana Saraiva, through which we listen to a single long breath of the clarinet, distributed by seven speakers in the exhibition space.
At Casa Modernista, Philippe Van Snick presents two interventions based on his understanding of how colour and the coloured surface don’t exist in isolation. On the ground floor, we see “Mexican dream cabin” (2015), an installation based on primary colours and pure forms, oriented by dynamical and mathematical ideals. “Sun umbrella” (1979/2015), by its turn, occupies the garden with coloured awnings that provide a domestic counterpoint to the house’s modern achitecture.
Steegmann Mangrané occupies the rooms of the upper floor with “Família moderna” [Modern Family] (2015), semi-organical and semi-geometrical sculptures that approach with irony the normativity of the subject established by modern ideals, and “Systemic Grid (floor)” (2015), an installation in steel.
For the curator, the project creates approximations between the production of both artists “through the architectures of Reidy and Warchavchik, in Rio and São Paulo, a modern repertoire that, for the artists, doesn’t appear as a linear narrative, but in the form of traces od fragments”.
