Português
Pontogor’s project was selected from over 100 proposals submitted to the first open call for the Hello.Again programme.
The Brazilian artist from Rio de Janeiro occupies Pivô’s ground floor with a large metal circle, built inside the space itself, and surrounding its iconic supporting column.
It is impossible to separate the column from the circle, as its diameter is larger than the room, unsettling the usual layout of Pivô’s reception.
Visitors cannot see the whole circle so must move around it in order to fully understand it. Reflecting on the idea of comprehension as a circular process, Pontogor calls attention to the physical perception of the object in space, which precedes any possible conceptual interpretation around its image.
HERMES, TRAPPED IN HIS OWN LABYRINTH
“…and he finishes the sentence by drawing a large circle in pencil around the problem.”
A large metal circle* is built inside an exhibition room. The circle encompasses a column, like a puzzle where we need to set apart two pieces, but the action seems impossible as the circle, which is completely closed, inhibits such a move.
Its size and position prevent us from seeing it as a mere graphic ‘representation’ or as a simple geometric figure; therefore, we can only trust its shape. The circle is experienced in a fragmented way, through the curves that suggest an ‘ideal form’.
But how can we think about the circle?
Understanding a text is, first and foremost, to be able to be interpreted by it. The process of understanding is different from other intellectual processes. It happens in a circular movement, from the pre-understanding of the whole to the understanding of the parts, and from the understanding of the parts to making sense of the whole.
We can follow the journey of a geometer, who uses and talks about visible shapes; however, not about them as such but about their reflexes. Geometers study the circle and the diagonal themselves, not their image. What they are really after is to recognise those realities that can only be contemplated by the mind.
We can also see it as a labyrinth, where there are no stairs to climb, or doors to force open, or tiring corridors to follow, or walls to obstruct movement. Therefore, the viewer has the opportunity to understand and misunderstand, as well as to move from one to the other. The circle questions everything it represents: method, its nature as a messenger and, ultimately, hermeneutics itself, by demonstrating the heterogeneous consequences of its intervention.
The observer/reader enters the space and falls into a circular labyrinth of understanding the shape that is trapping him or her, and that is also trapped by the space/context. Any previous knowledge leads to an interpretation and then to a certain understanding, which, in turn, alters reality, and therefore changes the ‘new’ previous knowledge of the situation, which leads to a new interpretation, and so forth…
* Please bear in mind that this book’s main flaw is you, the reader. You are in a hurry to get older and the book is slow; you love direct and nourished narration and a regular and fluent style, but this book and my style are like the drunk, balancing from right to left, walking and stopping, moaning, roaring, laughing out loud, threatening the skies, contradicting themselves, slipping and falling…
His research focuses on media such as video, photography, installation, performance and music. Interested in the noise and the wear and tear in images and sounds, attentive to error and chance as tools, the creative process is planned from the hermeneutic thought in the search for sensorial solutions to shape philosophical problems about space, time and dream. Pontogor is a member of Cia Ueinzz de Teatro .
He has participated in artistic residencies such as: Batiscafo, in Cuba; Air Antwerpen, in Belgium; Urra, in Buenos Aires, among others. Among the main exhibitions in which he participated are: Ver Como Anda o Mundo Sem os Olhos, Sé Galeria, São Paulo; Labirinto de Hermes, Pivô, São Paulo; Perdendo a Fé, na Aldeia Gentil, Rio de Janeiro; Rumos Artes Visuais, em São Paulo. In 2007 he won the Prodem prize at the Siart Biennial in La Paz, Bolivia with the video/installation Pianos.
