Paulo Bruscky (Recife PE 1949)
Paulo Bruscky is a multimedia artist and poet recognized for his pioneering, experimental work in Brazilian contemporary art. Beginning his artistic career in the 1960s, he immersed himself in the investigations of conceptual art and, from the 1970s onward, broadened his field of activity with innovative research in xerox art. In 1973, Bruscky became one of the first Brazilian artists to engage in the International Mail Art Movement, a decentralized and collaborative artistic practice based on sending works through the post, marked by its critical and countercultural character.
In 1974, he launched the Manifesto Nadaísta and organized, in Recife, two international mail art exhibitions in 1975 and 1976. The second show was censored and closed down by the military, which highlights the provocative nature of his production under the dictatorship. Between 1979 and 1982, he made 30 artist's films and video artworks, extending his practice into the audiovisual field. From 1983 onward, he began producing video installations, keeping his focus on technological experimentation. In 1980, he innovated once again by creating the xerox-film, based on sequences of xerographic images.
His international standing was consolidated when he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981, which allowed him to live in New York for a year. That same year, he took part in the 16th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo with a special room devoted to mail art. Paulo Bruscky also stands out as a publisher of artist's books and as an important collector of documents related to contemporary art, including correspondence with members of the Fluxus and Gutai groups, key movements of 20th-century experimental art.
In 2004, his studio was moved in its entirety from Recife to São Paulo and reconstructed as one of the special rooms of the 26th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. This initiative reinforced his importance as a central figure of conceptual and experimental art in Brazil and as a weaver of international creative networks. His work continues to challenge the traditional boundaries of artistic languages, exploring the media and the expressive possibilities of art as a form of critique and invention.
Critical Commentary
At the beginning of his career, Paulo Bruscky worked with drawing, painting and printmaking. Later he turned to performance and the production of artist's books. From the late 1960s, he developed works with media, interventions and proposals in the field of conceptual art. His experiments with mail art, audio art, video art, artdoor and xerography/fax art are regarded as pioneering in the discussions about the use of new media in Brazilian art. The dissolution of boundaries between artistic languages has been present in the artist's production since the end of the 1960s.
During the 1970s, he worked with video, photo-language and mail art. He is recognized as one of the most important renewers of Recife's contemporary art scene. Most of the time, especially in Latin America, the content of works from this period is primarily political. As the art critic Cristina Freire recalls, mail art became a strategy of freedom in the face of an oppressive political context.
He explores the creative possibilities of xerox art, creating distortions (which, given the technology of the time, he obtained by deregulating the machine itself) and using mirrors and lenses, as well as his own body. The question of the body, fundamental in the production of other artists of the period, is also present in his experiments with X-rays, electroencephalograms and electrocardiograms.
Some xerox artworks are gathered in the publication Alto Retrato, from 2001, in which he starts from portraits of himself and from urban scenes on which he intervenes with drawings, captions and stamps, with great irony, questioning society and also the art system.
Critiques
"For Brazilian artists in the 1970s, experimentation with new media such as xerox, thanks to its quick and easy reproduction, joined forces with the reach and universality of mail art. Stamps and postcards are frequently recreated and distributed through alternative networks.
Often, especially in Latin America, the content of these works, in the difficult years of the 1960s and 1970s, is eminently political. Mail art became, at that moment, a strategy of freedom in the face of the oppressive political context.
(...) In Brazil, Gabriel Borba, Julio Plaza and Regina Silveira in São Paulo; Paulo Bruscky and Daniel Santiago in Recife; Anna Bella Geiger, Artur Barrio and Regina Vater in Rio de Janeiro, among many others, fed this broad network of artistic information exchange".
Cristina Freire
FREIRE, Cristina. Arte postal: comunicação marginal. In: ARTE conceitual e conceitualismos: anos 70 no acervo do MAC USP. Texto Walter Zanini, José Teixeira Coelho Netto; texto Martha Wilson; curadoria e texto Cristina Freire. São Paulo: MAC/USP, 2000.
Solo Exhibitions
2001 - Recife PE - Between Art and Dream, at Observatório Cultural Malakoff
2002 - Recife PE - Ima/gens, at Galeria Vicente do Rego Monteiro
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Agora Agora/Agora Rio de Janeiro, at Agência Agora
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Free Show: Paulo Bruscky Special, at Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto
2005 - Porto Alegre RS - Projects and Proposals, at Galeria Iberê Camargo do Centro Cultural Usina do Gasômetro
2005 - Rio Claro SP - Paulo Bruscky: Visual Poems, at galeria Sechiisland´s Micro Gallery
2006 - Salvador BA - Caution, Work in Progress 1980 - 2006, at Galeria Pierre Verger
2007 - Recife PE - Of Men, Machines and Dreams, at galeria de arte Amparo 60
2007 - São Paulo SP - Ars Brevis, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo - MAC/USP
2008 - Campina Grande PB - Paulo Bruscky, at Galeria Cilindro
Group Exhibitions
1968 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Young Contemporary Art, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo - MAC/USP
1969 - Porto Alegre RS - 2nd Young Contemporary Art, at Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli - Margs
1969 - Recife PE - 28th Annual Painting Salon, at Museu do Estado de Pernambuco
1973 - Curitiba PR - 30th Paraná Salon, at Teatro Guaíra
1973 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 22nd National Salon of Modern Art
1976 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Arte Agora, at Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ
1976 - São Paulo SP - Recent Acquisitions and Donations, at MAC/USP
1977 - São Paulo SP - Visual Poetics, at MAC/USP
1980 - Recife PE - Xeroxarte, at Museu do Estado de Pernambuco - MEPE
1981 - São Paulo SP - 16th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1983 - Recife PE - 36th Pernambuco Visual Arts Salon, at Museu do Estado de Pernambuco
1983 - Ribeirão Preto SP - Xerography: Brazilian Sampling, at Galeria Campus da USP
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Interventions in Urban Space, at Galeria Sérgio Milliet da Funarte
1984 - São Paulo SP - 15th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - MAM/SP
1984 - São Paulo SP - Arte Xerox Brasil, at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
1985 - Niterói RJ - Trends of the Artist's Book in Brazil, at galeria de arte da Universidade Federal Fluminense - UFF
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1985 - São Paulo SP - Art New Media/Multimedia: Brazil 70/80, at MAB/Faap
1985 - São Paulo SP - Trends of the Artist's Book in Brazil, at Centro Cultural São Paulo - CCSP
1986 - Kyoto (Japan) - 7th International Impact Art Festival, at Kyoto City Museum
1987 - São Paulo SP - Palavra Imágica, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - 1st São Paulo International Visual Poetry Exhibition, at CCSP
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1991 - São Paulo SP - Project: 100 Years of Avenida Paulista, at Casa das Rosas
1992 - Madrid (Spain) - Juan Gris. Una Mirada Tecnológica, at Fundación de Arte y Tecnología de Madrid
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Via Fax, at Museu do Telefone
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Situations: Brazilian Art in the 1970s, at Fundação Casa França-Brasil
2000 - São Paulo SP - Conceptual Art and Conceptualisms: The 1970s in the MAC/USP Collection, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2001 - Campinas SP - (Almost) Ephemeral Art, at Itaú Cultural
2001 - Porto (Portugal) - 2001 Mistura + Confronto, at Estação Elétrica do Freixo
2001 - São Paulo SP - Sergio Motta Prize
2001 - São Paulo SP - 27th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
2002 - Austin (United States) - Brazilian Visual Poetry, at Mexic-Arte Museum
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary, at Paço Imperial
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Panorama of Brazilian Art, at MAM/RJ
2002 - Salvador BA - 27th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia - MAM/BA
2002 - São Paulo SP - 27th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/RJ
2003 - Curitiba PR - Imagery, at Casa Romário Martins
2003 - Recife PE - Seeing Again/Seeing the New, at Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães - Mamam
2003 - São Paulo SP - The Subversion of the Media, at Itaú Cultural
2003 - São Paulo SP - Art and Society: A Controversial Relationship, at Itaú Cultural
2004 - Recife PE - Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães Collection, at Mamam
2004 - São Paulo SP - 26th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
2004 - São Paulo SP - Emoção Art.ficial 2.0: Technological Divergences, at Itaú Cultural
2005 - São Paulo SP - The Body in Contemporary Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
2006 - Recife PE - Art and Neuroscience, at Centro de Convenções de Pernambuco
2006 - Petrópolis RJ - Signs on the Track, at Museu Imperial
2007 - Brasília DF - Garden of Power, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil - CCBB/DF
2007 - Brasília DF - Technopoetics, at Espaço Cultural Marcantonio Vilaça
2007 - São Paulo SP - The 1970s - Art as Question, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2007 - São Paulo SP - Future of the Present, at Itaú Cultural
2008 - Madrid (Spain) - Arco, at Instituto Feira de Madri
2008 - São Paulo SP - Panorama of Panoramas, at MAM/SP
Source: Itaú Cultural
