VIVID [RADICAL] MEMORY

Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos [Insertions in Ideological Circuits] (1970), works in which Meireles printed subversive phrases on banknotes and Coca-Cola bottles.

Cildo Meireles was born in Rio de Janeiro and studied there at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes and the Escola do Museu de Arte Moderna. Cildo Meireles moved to Brasília at the age of 10. It was there that he made his first contact with modern and contemporary art.

From 1963 onwards, he studied with Felix Alejandro Barrenechea (1921- ) and accompanied international production through books and magazines. At this point, he was impressed by the exhibition of the African mask and sculpture collection of the University of Dakar at the Universidade de Brasília - UnB [University of Brasília].[1] Through publications, he became familiar with the Neoconcretist group of Rio de Janeiro. He felt attracted by the movement and became interested in the possibility created by the group "of thinking about art in terms that were not limited to the visual".[2] At the same time, unlike those artists, his work at the time was gestural and figurative, with drawing of an Expressionist nature.

In 1967, he moved to Rio de Janeiro. During this year, his drawing retreated into the background and he abandoned Expressionist figuration to turn to three-dimensional works. His first installation was Desvio para o Vermelho [Diversion to the Red], at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ [Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art], in 1967. He created the Espaços Virtuais: Canto [Virtual Spaces: Corner] (1967), environments resembling the interiors of a house, organised according to the geometric speculations of the artist. In 1970, he took part in the collective exhibition Information at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The show included most of the conceptual output of the 1960s. Cildo Meireles presented the Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos [Insertions in Ideological Circuits] (1970), works in which he printed subversive phrases on banknotes and Coca-Cola bottles. Political interventions in banal objects was a constant feature of his works between 1970 and 1975, such as Árvore do Dinheiro [Money Tree] (1969), Introdução a uma Nova Crítica [Introduction to a New Criticism] (1970) and O Sermão da Montanha: Fiat Lux [The Sermon on the Mount: Fiat Lux] (1973).

From 1971 to 1973, he lived in the United States. Upon returning to Brazil, he concentrated on conceptual languages and on the appropriation of non-artistic objects. With other Brazilian artists of his generation, Meireles was a founder of the alternative journals Malasartes in 1975 and A parte do fogo in 1980. In 1974, he completed the first version of the work Malhas da Liberdade [Networks of Freedom] (1976). In 1975, he realised the installation EurekaBlindhotland, in which he investigated the non-visual sensory properties of objects that he used. During the second half of the 1970s, he broadened this discussion in sculptures such as A Diferença entre um Círculo e uma Esfera É o Peso [The Difference between a Circle and a Sphere Is the Weight] (1976), Estojo de Geometria [Geometry Box] (1977) and Rodos [Scrapers] (1978).

At the start of the 1980s, he incorporated certain pictorial elements into his installations and sculptures, as was the case in Volátil [Volatile] (1980), Maca [Stretcher] (1983), Cinza [Grey] (1984) and Para Pedro [For Pedro] (1984). In 1987, he realised Missão/Missões [Mission/Missions], at the Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro [Cláudio Santoro's National Theatre], installation that addressed the deleterious effects of colonization upon the indigenous peoples of Brazil. The work produced Meirelles' political themes on a monumental scale.

Meireles's installations have been exhibited at the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 1984; the Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, 1986; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1990; and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1990. His work has been included in the 1976 Venice Biennale; the 1977 Paris Biennale; the 1981 and 1989 São Paulo Bienals; Modernidade: Art bresilien du 20s siede, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1987; The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, 1988; Brazil Projects, Institute for Contemporary Art, P.S. 1 Museum, Long Island City, New York, 1988; Magidens de la terre, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989; Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and Cornerhouse, Manchester, 1990; America: Bride of the Sun, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1992; Encounters/Displacements: Luis Camnitzer, Alfredo Jaar, Oldo Meireles, Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, The University of Texas, Austin, 1992; and Documenta 9, Kassel, 1992. [3]

*Biography by ENCICLOPEDIA ITAU CULTURAL ARTES VISUAIS (http://www.itaucultural.org.br/aplicexternas/enciclopedia_ic/)

Notes

1. HERKENHOFF, Paulo; CAMERON, Dan; MOSQUERA, Gerardo. Cildo Meireles. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2000. p. 9.

2. Idem p. 13.

3. BARELLA, Elaine in RASMUSSEM, Aldo (ed.). Latin american artists of the twentieth century. Catálogo de exposição. New York: MOMA, 1993. pp. 385-386