Taking a stroll through nearly any gallery of contemporary art in Brazil, one is going to find evidence of the great thrust toward conceptual art in the late 60s and early 70s. The conditions in the country were such that it made more sense than ever to embrace the ephemeral, where artists would perform actions with objects they could throw away, or might otherwise disintegrate on their own. The trend toward the ephemeral was also boosted by the Fluxus movement, as well as other avant garde descendants who were finding new ways of making meaning. It’s still very much a part of how things are in Rio today, where visitors can leave their hotel in Rio de Janeiro to wander into a gallery where the level of experiment is still very high.
It wouldn’t be that way without the previous generation’s efforts, and certainly couldn’t have happened without the work of Artur Barrio . His work blends into his life, and the whole thing comes to resemble a large art experiment. He’s been at the forefront of many different changes in the art scene, affecting the culture at large on a local and international scale. When other artists were talking about impermanence, he was practicing it, and performing it, and writing about it in a simultaneous narration of the moment. He’s lived it so thoroughly that his work has been impossible to archive, and it wasn’t until 2006, when he was 61, that he had his first exhibition in the US . It wasn’t that he was unknown, but that no one knew how to show the work.
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