PARAMPARA
Manuel Brandazza
Curator: Carla Barbero
September 16 - October 29 2022
Someone placed some sensual fish in the water as if they were jewels. The river is the first surreal landscape, that universal paradise and founder of peoples where the noblest virtues for the continuity of life are cultivated. Manuel knows this, and, more, as a disciple of the Paraná, appears to guard the liturgy of the river: its nights, the humidity of its islands, the fish gliding — with such sexy ease —, the shade of vegetation that reaches the brown shores. Brandazza creates beings more than two meters high, hybrid deities that mix human beings with bogues and pacús, mermaids sheathed in Schiaparelli, and organizes them for this luxurious celebration.
Parampara continues a series of works started last year, which the artist first exhibited under the name Muchacho del Paraná. A mural installation that quoted Lucio Fontana's iconic 1942 sculpture. Here, Brandazza absorbs, along with the link to local history, the dramatic atmosphere of the present. The work breathes a context marked by the ecocide that has been taking place in the last decades in the Argentinean littoral, provoking the most serious drying out of the river in 77 years. It is precisely the tension between the beauty of his sculptures, pearly with mud, and the sensual fantasy evoked by those bodies in the midst of brutal reality — the “bitter-sweetâ€, as Ann Carson defines eros — that emerges in Brandazza's work and governs everything.
Between the gallantry of the party and the sacrificial laying out of the ritual, a shoal of matelassé hangs from hooks. In crystal organza and taffeta, all sewn with white thread and pearls, each piece spills out a river scene. Cloaks that display a regional visual rhythm give reference to Juan Grela, Aid Herrera and Raúl DomÃnguez. The seams, randomly drawn lines, guide us through their stitching to faces, sexes and nettings that interlink and camouflage, like snakes. As if that were not enough, these beings are also covered with sgraffito, fired and varnished clay jewelry. Each tells a new story: scaly textures shape eyes and breasts, the fisherwoman's net multiplies as a pattern, dissolving the figures in the background. There is such dedication in the engraving of each line: messages of true love. Beauty finds no qualms; ostentatious and full of grace, these pieces are shaped by an excessive gesture in which appears the camp aesthetic of the littoral.
In this exhibition, as he has been doing throughout the last year, the artist finds an integrating power between the formal, the poetic and the historical in precise portions, especially in terms of time. It would be shallow to observe these works in isolation: this is the condensation of a long journey, from textile design and effervescent performances in the Buenos Aires nightlife of the nineties, as well as his residence in Rio de Janeiro, surrounded by the botanical hordes, and his work at the Escola do Samba Unidos do Viradouro in the mid-noughties — and even the new perceptions brought to him by the continuous practice of yoga. From the parties at Ave Porco and El Dorado, where a fundamental performance art was conceived to conceptualize the local queer genealogy, to his present time in Rosario, his native affective environment, Brandazza's work has become a flowing stream of corporeal images. A current that draws from the surrealist traditions of the littoral, as well as from the universe of pop music and the vision of key 20th century fashion designers such as Gaultier, and even from the Brazilian comparsas, all under the imperious need for enjoyment and pleasure.
In Hinduism, Parampara is a sonorous expression that indicates the oral transmission of knowledge between masters and disciples, the way in which wisdom circulates. Brandazza's work seems to consist in gathering the attributes of the Paraná and creating tributaries to honor it, just as others before him did. And this is no easy task, now that the floods are coming in, and the yarará comes out for carnival.
Carla Barbero
