Ricardo Roclaw Basbaum (São Paulo SP 1961)
Multimedia artist, professor, curator, critic.
He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1977 and studied biological sciences between 1979 and 1982 at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). In 1981 he formed Dupla Especializada [Specialized Duo] in partnership with Alexandre Dacosta (1959). Two years later, he created Grupo Seis Mãos [Six Hands Group] with Dacosta and Barrão (1959). Between 1985 and 1987, he took the specialization course in art history at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ). He held his first solo exhibition in 1988 at the Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes (CCCM), Rio de Janeiro. He worked as artist in residence at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in 1987 and, in 1989, began the project NBP - Novas Bases para a Personalidade [New Bases for Personality], carrying out experiments with objects, texts, installations, diagrams and drawings. In 1991, he coordinated the Theoretical Center and the Intermedia Center of the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV/Parque Lage). Around the same time, he formed the group Visorama with Rio de Janeiro visual artists. In 1994 he obtained a Master of Arts in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London, England. He completed a master's degree in communication and culture at UFRJ in 1996. Between 1999 and 2003, he coordinated Agora - Agência de Organismos Artísticos [Agency of Artistic Organisms]. He is a professor at the Instituto de Artes of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Uerj).
Critical Commentary
Ricardo Basbaum began his work in the 1980s, exploring various forms of language in his works. His production includes performances, actions, interventions, texts, manifestos, objects and installations.
In 1989, Basbaum began the project NBP - Novas Bases para a Personalidade [New Bases for Personality], whose aim is to establish direct connections with the viewer. In this work, he presents the leisure capsules, small structures built of iron, wire mesh, foam, fabric and polystyrene, designed for participants to enter and lie down in, alone or in pairs, thus experiencing conditions of greater closeness or of solitude. The discussion of human relationships is also addressed in a series of diagrammatic drawings, presented on panels on the walls of the exhibition space. In the opinion of art critic Guy Brett, the artist's production reveals the influence of the works of Lygia Clark (1920 - 1988), Lygia Pape (1927 - 2004) and Hélio Oiticica (1937 - 1980), as it involves concepts of sociability, community, isolation or social atomization.
Basbaum also makes artist's books derived from his proposals, such as NBP x Eu-Você [NBP x Me-You], 2000. He is the editor of the anthology Arte Contemporânea Brasileira: Texturas, Dicções, Ficções, Estratégias [Brazilian Contemporary Art: Textures, Dictions, Fictions, Strategies], published in 2001, which brings together texts by artists and critics discussing new artistic trends. Between 1999 and 2003, together with other artists in Rio de Janeiro, he created and coordinated the independent initiative Agora - Agência de Organismos Artísticos, launching various publications and promoting events such as lectures and contemporary art exhibitions.
Critiques
"The classical period lived a fundamental duality. On one side, Beauty was a transcendent entity, a rational being (...). On the other side, art was understood as a material means, as technique, aimed at an external end (...). Despite the actual reality of art, Spirit and body, thought and matter remained separate.
But modernity radically questioned this separation. Conceptual art, for example, tried to eliminate the material element from its propositions. However, doubts would remain as to the real possibilities of this project, since a pure concept is in itself unrealizable (...).
Since 1989 Ricardo Basbaum has devoted himself to the same question. And his exhibition Novas Bases para a Personalidade [New Bases for Personality] presents an innovative solution. Conceptualism was immediately rejected: his 'instant logos' is quite far from the Americans' concept. It is not a matter here of denying matter through Thought, but of affirming these two terms in what makes them different. The artist says: 'We want to settle, pretentiously, within this minimal interval, inside instantaneity - or rather, beside it, but on the inside'. Thus, between thought and matter there is always a discontinuity, a lapse: the interval of time between sending medium and receiving medium. The function of art is to overcome this difference in a paradoxical unity capable of generating 'other processes'. (...) Taking the acronym NBP as a 'general motivation', the artist created a large diagram in blueprint, which works as the general equation of the exhibition (...).
The acronym NBP also took the form of a rectangular piece with chamfered corners, fitted to one of the side walls of the gallery. Its large dimensions intervene in the space, creating a strong pole of visual attraction. Two other pieces, made of leatherette and foam, of an inviting softness, occupied the center of the gallery. Their function was to attract with the promise of pleasurable visual contact. The viewer walks from piece to piece. Here he directs his attention to the formulas and texts, there it is the promise of physical pleasure that attracts him, and over there it is the large dimensions of the emblem; and in this movement he ends up inserting himself into the overall plan of the exhibition. However, the viewer's action only acquired an artistic dimension because of the stickers.
Let us analyze the stickers: they were handed out and stuck on the shirts of visitors to the exhibition and even on other supports. Their logic is similar to that of interventions. In general, the intervention aims to catch art at the moment it appears. It is the displacement of the flow of life's events through the insertion of a sign; this sign must at once establish a symbolic universe and criticize (in reality) the arbitrariness of social conventions. Ricardo Basbaum developed a series of interventions at Unicamp (1987), using the drawing of an Eye. But now the stickers did not so much create a new territory as outline - by 'marking' the visitors to the exhibition - the influence of an already constituted area.
It was with the stickers that the work-viewer ensemble acquired a unique functioning. The artist realized, then, that the constructed elements were surpassed in a unity which, as we have seen, included difference, the Other. 'Bodies that can occupy many places in space at the same time. Temporalities that drive spaces, spaces that take shape in time: continuities and discontinuities. Our bodies moving through these oscillations.'
Ricardo Basbaum knows that the art system in Brazil suffers from a constitutive fragility and that a work, an exhibition, will have to create, so to speak, its own space of circulation."
Renato Rodrigues
Rodrigues, Renato. Ricardo Basbaum no E. C. Sérgio Porto. Guia das Artes, n. 32, pp. 37-38.
Testimonials
"Faced with the experience of adversity characteristic of the Brazilian environment, and with an art scene of precarious institutionalization, I steered my own visual work toward concerns with the articulation of the verbal and visual fields - and their communicative interfaces - developing a project around the 'materiality' and 'spatiality of thought', characterizing the work in its visible and invisible presence and proposing a sensory field also occupied by the 'phenomenology of the concept'. Since 1989 I have been developing the project NBP - Novas Bases para a Personalidade [New Bases for Personality], through objects, drawings, texts, installations, diagrams, etc.: the concern is to establish a direct connection with the viewer, turning him into the vehicle and support of the game of art, since his presence triggers the mechanisms of the work, setting it in motion. The proposal Você Gostaria de Participar de uma Experiência Artística? [Would You Like to Participate in an Artistic Experience?], for example, begun in 1994, offers the participant an object to be used in his home for a month; the participant himself records his actions, allowing himself (or not) to be contaminated by the NBP project - but, in any case, involved in an experience of transformation, in which the object gradually metamorphoses according to the activities carried out. The point is to emphasize the connections that can be established between body/individual and art object, producing at the same time continuities - in the sense of a body/work hybridization - and discontinuities - as self-estrangement and analysis of the experience. There is an invasive aggressiveness that aspires to (...) a colonization of the space of interiority, but based on a compact strategy, in which the work of art is the vehicle for an almost genetic alteration - an operation of implanting, in the viewer/participant, a device that generates the art-thought flow."
Ricardo Basbaum
Basbaum, Ricardo. De fuera hacia adentro/de dentro hacia afuera. Lápiz, n. 134-135.
Solo Exhibitions
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Star Wars, at CCCM
1992 - São Paulo SP - Novas Bases para a Personalidade, NBP [New Bases for Personality, NBP], at Pavilhão da Bienal
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - NBP, at Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - NBP, at Galeria do Ibeu
1994 - Coimbra (Portugal) - NBP, at Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra
1995 - Geneva (Switzerland) - 4 Manifestes [4 Manifestos], at 10000 Parkings
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4 Manifestos, at Centro de Artes Calouste Gulbenkian
1995 - Vitória ES - Projeto NBP + 4 Manifestos [NBP Project + 4 Manifestos], at Galeria de Arte e Pesquisa da Ufes
1997 - Niterói RJ - NBP: identidade/arquitetura [NBP: Identity/Architecture], at Espaço Aberto UFF
1997 - Brasília DF - Você Gostaria de Participar de uma Experiência Artística? [Would You Like to Participate in an Artistic Experience?], at Espaço Cultural 508 Sul
1998 - São Paulo SP - 4 Manifestos, painel mural [4 Manifestos, mural panel], at MAM/SP
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - G. x Eu [G. x Me], at Espaço P
2001 - São Paulo SP - NBP x Eu-Você [NBP x Me-You], at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
2003 - Porto Alegre RS - Solo, at Torreão
Group Exhibitions
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1º Salão Bennett Universitário de Artes Plásticas [1st Bennett University Visual Arts Salon]
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 6º Salão Carioca de Artes Plásticas [6th Rio de Janeiro Visual Arts Salon]
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Dupla Especializada [Specialized Duo], at Galeria Contemporânea
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Pintura! Pintura! [Painting! Painting!], at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Seis Mãos [Six Hands], at Galera das Artes do Circo Voador
1983 - Santos SP - 10º Salão de Arte Jovem [10th Young Art Salon]
1983 - São Paulo SP - Arte na Rua [Art in the Street], organized by MAC/USP
1984 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Arte Contemporánea en Latinoamérica [Contemporary Art in Latin America], at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas
1984 - Niterói RJ - Arte Brasileira Atual [Current Brazilian Art], at Museu do Ingá
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8º Salão Carioca de Artes Plásticas [8th Rio de Janeiro Visual Arts Salon]
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Como Vai Você, Geração 80? [How Are You, 80s Generation?], at EAV/Parque Lage
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Geração 80: núcleo jovem MP2 Arte [80s Generation: MP2 Arte Young Group], at MP2 Arte
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Intervenções no Espaço Urbano [Interventions in Urban Space], at Galeria Sérgio Milliet da Funarte
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 9º Salão Carioca de Artes Plásticas [9th Rio de Janeiro Visual Arts Salon]
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Dupla Especializada [Specialized Duo], at Galeria do Ibeu
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Olhos, Discos e Eletrodomésticos [Eyes, Records and Household Appliances], at Galeria Contemporânea
1985 - São Paulo SP - Seis Mãos [Six Hands], at CCSP
1986 - Guadalajara (Mexico) - Escrete Volador, at Galeria Magrite
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Conquista do Espaço [The Conquest of Space], at Rio Design Center
1987 - Belo Horizonte MG - 19º Salão Nacional de Arte [19th National Art Salon]
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Carmen e o Objeto Contemporâneo [Carmen and the Contemporary Object], at Museu Carmen Miranda
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Lapada Show, at Espaço Brumado
1987 - São Paulo SP - 5º Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea [5th São Paulo Contemporary Art Salon], at Pinacoteca do Estado
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Alice 190, at Instituto Cultural Brasil-Argentina
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - O Mestre à Mostra [The Master on Show], at EAV/Parque Lage
1990 - Brasília DF - Prêmio Brasília de Artes Plásticas [Brasília Visual Arts Award], at MAB/DF
1990 - Petrópolis RJ - 4-44, at Atelier Livre de Petrópolis
1990 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Possível Imagem [Possible Image], at Solar Grandjean de Montigny - Fiat Visual Arts Prize
1991 - Brasília DF - Consumir o Consumo [Consuming Consumption], at Sala Athos Bulcão
1991 - Niterói RJ - Consumir o Consumo [Consuming Consumption], at Galeria de Arte UFF
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Acervo do Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes [Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes Collection], at MAM/RJ
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - EAV - Processo nº 738. 765. 2 [EAV - Process No. 738. 765. 2], at Ibac
1991 - São Paulo SP - Programa de Exposições de Artes Plásticas [Visual Arts Exhibition Program], at CCSP
1991 - São Paulo SP - Selecionados do Centro Cultural São Paulo [Selected from Centro Cultural São Paulo], at Masp
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Atelier Vila Isabel, at Uerj
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Contemporary Art, at Ibac
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Eco-Sensorial: extrativismo urbano [Eco-Sensorial: Urban Extractivism], at Galeria de Arte da EAV/Parque Lage
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Intervenção no Espaço Branco [Intervention in the White Space], at EAV/Parque Lage
1992 - São Paulo SP - Consumir o Consumo [Consuming Consumption], at MAC/USP
1992 - São Paulo SP - Programa Anual de Exposições de Artes Plásticas 91 [Annual Visual Arts Exhibition Program 91], at Fundação Bienal
1993 - Brasília DF - Um Olhar sobre Joseph Beuys [A Look at Joseph Beuys], at Fundação Athos Bulcão
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17º Salão Carioca de Artes Plásticas [17th Rio de Janeiro Visual Arts Salon]
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Barrão, Basbaum, Canalle e Dacosta [Barrão, Basbaum, Canalle and Dacosta], at Galeria Primeiro Piso da EAV/Parque Lage
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Impressões Itinerantes [Traveling Prints], at EAV/Parque Lage
1993 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP
1994 - London (England) - Degree Show, at Goldsmiths College
1994 - London (England) - Private View, at Chisenhale Gallery
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - BR-UK, at MAM/RJ
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Escultura Carioca [Rio de Janeiro Sculpture], at Paço Imperial
1995 - Bilbao (Spain) - La Isla del Copyright [The Island of Copyright]
1995 - Curitiba PR - Impressões Itinerantes [Traveling Prints]
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Dezoito [Eighteen], at CCCM
1996 - Brasília DF - Impressões Itinerantes [Traveling Prints], at UnB
1996 - Porto Alegre RS - Impressões Itinerantes [Traveling Prints], at Usina do Gasômetro
1996 - Belo Horizonte MG - Impressões Itinerantes [Traveling Prints], at Palácio das Artes
1996 - Goiânia GO - 1º Circuito Nacional de Art-Door [1st National Art-Door Circuit], at Fundação Jaime Câmara
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Amigos do Calouste [Friends of Calouste], at Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Esculturas no Paço [Sculptures at the Paço], at Paço Imperial
1996 - São Paulo SP - 12 Artistas Pesquisadores [12 Artist-Researchers], at Paço das Artes
1997 - Curitiba PR - A Arte Contemporânea da Gravura [The Contemporary Art of Printmaking], at Museu Metropolitano de Arte de Curitiba
1997 - Curitiba PR - A Arte Contemporânea da Gravura [The Contemporary Art of Printmaking], at MAC/PR
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Arte no Campus [Art on Campus], at Universidade Veiga de Almeida
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Ibeu 60 Anos de Arte [Ibeu 60 Years of Art], at Galeria do Ibeu
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Palavreiro [Wordsmith], at Galeria Sérgio Milliet da Funarte
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Razões e Sensibilidades [Reasons and Sensibilities], at Museu da República
1997 - Schwaz (Austria) - Brasil [Brazil], at Galerie der Stadt Schwaz im Palais Enzenberg
1998 - Niterói RJ - O Artista Pesquisador [The Artist-Researcher], at MAC/Niterói
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mostra Rio Gravura: Espaço Gravado [Rio Printmaking Exhibition: Engraved Space], at Museu do Telefone/Telemar
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Reinauguração do Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto [Reopening of the Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto]
1999 - São Paulo SP - 26º Panorama de Arte Brasileira [26th Panorama of Brazilian Art], at MAM/SP
1999 - São Paulo SP - Outra Paisagem [Another Landscape], at Galeria Millan
1999 - Vila Nova de Cerveira (Portugal) - Bienal de Cerveira [Cerveira Biennial]
2000 - Fortaleza CE - 26º Panorama de Arte Brasileira [26th Panorama of Brazilian Art], at Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura
2000 - Niterói RJ - 26º Panorama de Arte Brasileira [26th Panorama of Brazilian Art], at MAC/Niterói
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Novas Direções [New Directions], at MAM/RJ
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Orlândia, at Rua Jornalista Orlando Dantas nº 53
2001 - São Paulo SP - Arco das Rosas: marchand como curador [Arco das Rosas: Dealer as Curator], at Casa das Rosas
2001 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Extra [Extra Biennial]
2002 - Brasília DF - Fragmentos a Seu Ímã [Fragments to Their Magnet], at Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo Venâncio
2002 - Walsall (England) - Vivências: dialogues between the works of Brazilian artists from the 1960s to 2002, at New Art Gallery Walsall
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Canteiro de Obras do Circo Voador [Circo Voador Building Site], at Circo Voador
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Livro: objeto da arte [The Book: Object of Art], at Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes
2002 - Salvador BA - 27º Panorama de Arte Brasileira [27th Panorama of Brazilian Art], at MAM/BA
2002 - São Paulo SP - 20 Artistas / 20 Anos [20 Artists / 20 Years], at CCSP
2002 - São Paulo SP - 25th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
2002 - São Paulo SP - Ana Miguel, Elder Rocha, Ricardo Basbaum e Sérgio Sister [Ana Miguel, Elder Rocha, Ricardo Basbaum and Sérgio Sister], at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
2002 - São Paulo SP - E(x)tra Bienal, at Extra Arte Contemporânea
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Alfândega [Customs House], at Armazém 5
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Grande Orlândia: artistas abaixo da linha do equador [Greater Orlândia: Artists below the Equator]
2003 - São Paulo SP - MAC USP 40 Anos: interfaces contemporâneas [MAC USP 40 Years: Contemporary Interfaces], at MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Ocupação Prestes Maia [Prestes Maia Occupation], at Av. Prestes Maia 853
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Novas Aquisições 2003: Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand [New Acquisitions 2003: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection], at MAM/RJ
2004 - São Paulo SP - Vol., at Galeria Vermelho
Source: Itaú Cultural
