O interior está no exterior

The first exhibition [1] to occupy the headquarters of the Instituto Bardi / Casa de Vidro, was curated by the Swiss Hans Ulrich Obrist and attended by more than thirty artists and architects [2]. Obrist invited the group to experience the residency, production and world of Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi and projects by Lina, such as SESC Pompeia, and, from this contact, create works for the internal spaces of the Glass House as well as the garden.

The works produced involved an intrinsic dialogue with the spaces, with the couple’s life and ideas, in the sense of “bringing life back to the Glass House” and rescuing the space’s vocation as a meeting point for debate and experimentation of the arts, a hallmark of the Bardi residence for decades.

With heterogeneous productions in poetics and support, the group of artists worked with several concepts, for example: Renata Lucas, who installs a painted portrait of Lina in one of the glass windows in the room, and Olafur Eliasson with Fading Self Wall, which consists of a large semi-mirrored glass supported by the concrete base of the crystal easels placed in the dining room, both proposals explore the transparency present both in the Glass House and in the gallery of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Koo Jeong-a produced fifty plaster reproductions painted in phosphorescent colors of an ex-voto belonging to the couple’s collection, bringing to light both the artisanal and popular production investigated by Lina, as well as the reproducibility; Pedro Reyes suggested to visitors that they taste fried ants, a dish present in Brazilian popular cuisine in some regions; and Cildo Meireles, who installed a sound and olfactory work, in which Pietro’s voice could be heard saying “Lina, va fare un caffè!”, while exhaling the aroma of coffee.

[1] The exhibition had two moments, the first, still without all the works, was called the “prelude” and took place on September 5, 2012, on the eve of the 30th São Paulo International Biennial, and the second moment occurred from April 4th to May 30, 2013, with the inauguration taking place during the week of the 9th edition of SP-Arte.

[2] The guests group was composed by: Adrián Villar Rojas, Arto Lindsay, Cerith Wyn Evans & Pascale Berthier, Cildo Meireles, Cinthia Marcelle, Cristina Iglesias, Dan Graham, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Ernesto Neto, Gilbert & George, Isaac Julien, Jonathas de Andrade, José Celso Martinez Corrêa, Juan Araujo, Koo Jeong-a, Laercio Redondo & Laura Erber, Luisa Lambri, Madelon Vriesendorp, Norman Foster, Olafur Eliasson, Pablo León de la Barra, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Paulo Nazareth, Pedro Barateiro, Pedro Reyes, Philippe Parreno, Rem Koolhaas, Renata Lucas, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rivane Neuenschwander, SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima e Ryue Nishizawa), Sarah Morris, Tamar Guimarães e Waltercio Caldas, além do já falecido Alexander Calder.