Ivens Machado

Critical text

Together with Anna Bella Geiger, who was his teacher at the school of art in Rio de Janeiro, and a few other artists close to him (including Sonia Andrade, Fernando Cocchiarale, and Letícia Parente), Ivens Machado (Florianópolis 1942–2015 Rio de Janeiro) was one of the first Brazilian artists to experiment with video. The black-and-white films he made in 1974 show how he was keenly interested in gender themes, and they foreshadow his interest in the dynamics of bodies, which became a feature of his work in the decades following his initial experiences. He had previously worked mainly on paper, using lined or squared sheets that he tampered with in order to create continuous corruptions, which were perceptible to a greater or lesser degree. He later worked mainly on sculpture, some of it large-format, though he never abandoned drawing. In his three-dimensional works he used architectural materials, such as iron, concrete, and clay. Featuring irregular shapes and rough surfaces that recall the coarse finishes on the houses of the poor, his works at times allude to the world of sex, with shapes that suggest associations with elements of the human anatomy, but more often they appear to open up spaces for reflections on social and historical memory.

Text by Lorenzo Giusti

The artist’s voice

Building the invisible—an act that is not always rewarding—requires a game of concealment and appearance elaborated almost always in unattainable instances. The body of the work itself doesn’t contain art, but a gesture that many times averts it.