Dimensions
250 x 290 x 18mm
Part of the Contemporary Artists series.
Born in 1948, Cildo Meireles is one of Brazil's most significant living artists of the post-war period. A pioneer of installation art since the 1960s, Meireles is best known for his dramatic and politically-charged walk-in environments which often incorporate sound, smell and touch alongside visual experience, requiring the viewer's full perceptual involvement.
His installation 'Atraves' ('Through', 1983-89), first presented a the Kanaal Art Foundation, Kortrijk, Belgium in 1989, confronts the viewer with a prohibitive labyrinth of grilles, meshes and barriers of all descriptions, the floor covered in shimmering yet dangerous shards of broken glass. In this and other works, surprises and contradictions combine to scramble our habitual definitions of our environment, resulting in a metaphor of the imperfect, potentially hostile world in which we live. In other works Meireles offers an alternative - visual, political, sensual - to the real but often disappointing circumstances around us.
For several decades Meireles has been included in the most significant international surveys, from the landmark 'Information' exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1970 to the XXIV Biennial of Sao Paulo in 1998. A major retrospective of Meireles' work opened in 1999, organised by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, in association with the Museums of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Brazilian-based curator and critic, Herkenhoff analyses in depth the specific political and cultural context of Meireles' Brazilian art in counterpoint to the philosophical contexts of Western art history. Havana-based curator and writer, Mosquera discusses with the artist the context of his work in post-war Latin American art. New York curator and critic, Cameron navigates three environments of intense red, collectively titled 'Desvio para o Vermelho' ('Red Shift', 1967-84).
From the late 1960s onwards Cildo Meireles has written detailed project descriptions as an integral aspect of his work. Ranging from the description of the "ideological circuits" of information and commodity transactions, to speculations on theories of perception, his texts often bear witness both to individual and social crises and the transformative powers of the imagination.
'Contemporary Artists' is a series of authoritative and highly illustrated studies of important artists of the late 20th century. Each title offers a comprehensive survey of individual artists' works. Different genres of art writing are contributed by an international spectrum of authors who are leading figures in their fields, ranging from art history and criticism to philosophy, cultural theory and fiction. Each study provides incisive analyses and multiple perspectives on contemporary art and its inspiration. These are essential source books for everyone concerned with art today.
