Edifício-Galaxie (sobre a mobilidade)
Artist name
Artist year born
1947
Artwork make date
1982
Artwork material
photographic print
paper
paper
Artwork dimensions
Dimensions: variable
Artwork type (categories)
Photographic Installation
Accession method
Donated by Milton Machado 1995
Accession number
85-1995
Label text
Edificio Galaxie (sobre a mobilidade) (Galaxie Building (about mobility)) consists of a series of photos and photomontages that plays upon sequential arrangements of symbols of status together with visual and linguistic puns. Real estate in Portuguese is translated literally as 'immobile' while Galaxie is the name of a luxury car (automobile) produced by Ford in Brazil during the 1970s. These are the ingredients for the artist's comments on the aspirations of the middle classes, or the promise of social mobility during the milagre brasileiro (the military government's so-called economic 'Brazilian Miracle').
In Edificio Galaxie, like other pieces by Machado such as As Férias do Investigador, 21 Formas de Aminésia and A História do Futuro, there is a certain narrative element hovering around the work. Machado's practice traverses the disciplines of architecture and urban planning, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, performance, music, photography and video, but in many ways he is also a storyteller, a writer who narrates around the work, never quite reaching any sense of closure. Machado's narrative deconstructs any semantic conclusions with regard to the work through a process that emphasises its relation to time. No longer an inanimate object imbued with special significance, the work becomes an event within the world. Of course, this is true for all works of art, but unusually for an artist, it is he, as opposed to the art historian or critic, who first gives this dimension to the work, and as opposed to such third parties, it is only he who has the capacity, the knowledge, to thread the concept into the intimate and mundane history of the object. This relation to the work's destiny, to its exteriority, often involves recollections of extraordinary coincidences and misfortunes, which due to their obsessive rationality are reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges.
Michael Asbury
In Edificio Galaxie, like other pieces by Machado such as As Férias do Investigador, 21 Formas de Aminésia and A História do Futuro, there is a certain narrative element hovering around the work. Machado's practice traverses the disciplines of architecture and urban planning, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, performance, music, photography and video, but in many ways he is also a storyteller, a writer who narrates around the work, never quite reaching any sense of closure. Machado's narrative deconstructs any semantic conclusions with regard to the work through a process that emphasises its relation to time. No longer an inanimate object imbued with special significance, the work becomes an event within the world. Of course, this is true for all works of art, but unusually for an artist, it is he, as opposed to the art historian or critic, who first gives this dimension to the work, and as opposed to such third parties, it is only he who has the capacity, the knowledge, to thread the concept into the intimate and mundane history of the object. This relation to the work's destiny, to its exteriority, often involves recollections of extraordinary coincidences and misfortunes, which due to their obsessive rationality are reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges.
Michael Asbury
Last updated date
2008