Oscar Niemeyer’s concrete saucer hosts a weekend of modernism in Rio

More than 60 Brazilian design objects inhabit the sweeping, futuristic structure of Oscar Niemeyer‘s Museu de Arte Contemporânea Niterói in Rio de Janeiro this weekend. The free exhibition, ‘Then and Now: Brazilian Legacy’, presents an intergenerational dialogue between modernist and up to date Brazilian designers.

For Galerie Philia, the worldwide design and up to date artwork platform that organised the occasion, ‘Then and Now’ gives a second to mirror on the continuity of cultural expression within the face of huge societal and environmental change. ‘The context has shifted from utopian optimism to ecological urgency,’ says curator Ygaël Attali, ‘but the conviction that design can shape how we inhabit the world endures. Together, these works exemplify the breadth of Brazilian design – intimate, monumental, sculptural and poetic.’

Early modernists like Lina Bo Bardi, José Zanine Caldas, Joaquim Tenreiro and Jorge Zalszupin used design to carve out a brand new nationwide imaginative and prescient, whereas their up to date heirs — together with Aver, Dimitrih Correa, Hanna Englund and Alexia Vela Akasaka — are reasonably pushed by sustainability, materials analysis and the complexity of identification. Still there are a lot of shared qualities among the many oeuvres. ‘What unites them is an ethic of material intimacy and craft,’ says Attali. ‘Whether it is Tenreiro working with native woods, Zanine Caldas carving salvaged trunks or Hugo França reclaiming monumental fallen trees today, there is a deep respect for the expressive potential of material.’

The featured up to date designers have interaction with the modernist legacy ‘not by imitating, but by reframing’. For instance, Gabriela Campos names her furnishings after Calder and Mondrian; Estúdio Orth nods to Brutalism by sculptural solid brass; Maximiliano Crovato references artwork deco and Italian maximalism.

It was vital for Attali to stage the exhibition inside ‘a manifesto of modernism’, and Niemeyer’s round galleries at MAC Niterói ‘create a rhythm that naturally lends itself to dialogue’, he explains. ‘We opted for interweaving modern and contemporary works rather than separating them, so that resonances and dissonances could be felt.’

The cadence of those conversations is amplified by the quick weekend run of the exhibition: ‘It becomes an event, a moment not to be missed, rather than a show one can always postpone visiting,’ says Attali. ‘This urgency heightens the dialogue between past and present — a temporary constellation that lives only in memory once it closes.’