Artur Barrio

Artur Barrio (Artur Alipio Barrio de Sousa Lopes) is an artist who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Much of his work consists of installation pieces that create interaction with the public. Barrio engages the viewer as a participant in his art, often without their knowledge that it is art in which they are participating. By doing so, the participant can have an experience not removed from life but rather incorporated into it. He wants to encourage contact with all of reality, including the discards of life such as garbage. He wants us to recognize that this reality is just as real if we can see past the symbolic meanings we attach to these objects. (Manifesto MUD/MEAT SEWER) In 1952, he spent six months in Angola “where he discovered African culture.” He then moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1955. In 1967, he attended the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (School of Fine Arts), one of the centers of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. His teachers included Onofre Penteado, Abelardo Zaluar, Mário Barata, and Ítalo Campofiorito.

Barrio returned to Portugal during the Portuguese revolution in 1974. In 1975, he moved to Paris, and then, in 1981, to Amsterdam. He had a solo exhibition in the artist initiative Schottenburch, Amsterdam in 1981. Currently, he lives successively in Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence, and Rio de Janeiro.

Description of style Artur Barrio is seeking to create experience. He uses both ephemeral and precarious materials that provoke an extreme sensorial reaction. Items such as coffee grinds overwhelm the nose, while blood or meat produce a gut reaction. There is a concrete connection to the body and to food. This all generates a reanalysis of the immediate environment and sparks questions about what could have been the cause of these scenes. Artur Barrio changes the normal familiar surroundings and attempts to transport the visitor (participant), possibly through a little discomfort, to a place where everything needs to be more deeply examined.

Social/political context For much of Artur Barrio's career, Brazil was in the hands of a military dictatorship after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.

In 1970 he created Situação…DEFL…+s+…ruas…Abril…(Unleashing confusion on the streets...Situation), consisting of “the placement of five hundred plastic bags containing blood, nails, dung, waste, and other debris in downtown Rio during the peak of the dictatorship’s repression”

Barrio has always pushed the boundaries of what materials can be used in the production of art. He has used a variety of perishable materials like blood, nails, saliva, hair, urine, excrement, bones, toilet paper, tampons, used cotton, film negatives, and other similar items. He defends using such materials with his idea that "expensive materials are being imposed by an aesthetic thought of an elite that thinks from the top to the bottom."

Barrio has no interest in the preservation of his pieces since the art he is interested in is the experience of creating art and the experience of interacting with art. To Barrio, the artifacts that are used to create these experiences are not the art and do not need to be preserved.

Legacy Artur Barrio has become more accepting of the greater art community. His work (or replicas created as examples of his work) is now exhibited with increasing frequency. However, his attitude is not the main reason that Artur Barrio is now working within the larger established art community. The greater change was not in Artur Barrio but rather in the art word itself. Barrio still “views curators and institutions … as completely superfluous to requirements for works of art and exhibitions. In his eyes curators are reduced to the role of logistics co-ordinators, and, as such, the institution in turn becomes no more than a (temporary) channel for his work.” and the use of untraditional media in art has become acceptable.

Barrio now exhibits his work internationally.

Artworks Interminável, (Interminable) 2005 Série transportáveis, (Series you transported) 2003 Idéia Situação, (Idea Situation) 2002 Uma Extensâo no Tempo (An Extension in the Time) 1995 A Cancela de Carne (The Gate of Meat) 1994 N.....S....F....O....A..... (N.....S....F....O....A.....) Minha Cabeça Está Vazia/Meus Olhos Estão Cheios , (My Head Is Empty/My Eyes Are Full) 1983 Livro de Carne, (Book of Meat) 1978-79 LD Haneuse, photographer© Situação T/T1, (Situation T/T1) Belo Horizonte 20 April 1970 De dentro para fora, (Inside out) 1970

Exhibits

Currículo (Resume), Exposições Individuais (Individual expositions)

“Actions After Actions,” February 8–March 19, 2006, - Goldie Paley Gallery, The Galleries at Moore, Moore College of Art & Design “Barrio-Beuys” 2 July – 11 September 2005, - S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art Belgium. “The Body in Contemporary Brazilian Art” 2005, - Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo. Individual: 2005, - Millan gallery Antonio, São Paulo, Brazil. Individual: 2005, - Gallery Art 21, - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. "Mini-Retrospective of Artur Barrio" 2005, - Frac the Provence-Alps-Côte d´Azur, Marseille, France. Individual: 2005, - Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. "Inverted utopias" 2004, - The Museum of finishes Arts, Houston, U.S. "ART AND SOCIETY - an Controversial Relation" 2003, - Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, S.P, Brasil. "Violence and Passion" 2002, - Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, R.J, Brazil. "Violence and Passion" 2002, - Santander Cultural, Porto Alegre, Brasil. "Visceral Documents" April 30 to August 24, 2008. Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City. "Rodapés de carne" April to Mai 1978, GARAGE 103, Nice, France.

Exhibition with other Brazilian artists "Tropicalia - The 60s in Brasilien" 2010, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria