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Universal Particular
Res verso [2021] is the title of the installation created by Elilson for Vermelho’s courtyard. This is the artist’s first project at Vermelho since joining the gallery’s cast of represented artists in 2020.
In Res verso, unfolding his research around the “performativities of mobility”, the artist moves the “synthesis-object” used in the crossings between Europe and the Americas in the 15th and 16th century to the gallery's patio. In the installation, however, the sails are attached to a metal tube embedded in the reinforced concrete, making any movement impossible.
The title of the work, Res verso, reveals a semantic game between navigation techniques, such as the way of sailing against the wind called “upwind”, whose 45-degree angle prevents uncontrolled drifting; and, the wind-sharing function and thus of the movement of the boat by the duo of sails.
To these two technical aspects related to navigation, Elilson adds a reference to the Latin expression Res Pública (Public Thing), appropriating the prefix Res (thing), to comment on the current dystopian moment of reversal of values in today's world. -
Res verso, 2021sailing rig, rods, cords750 x 700 x 292 cm1/1
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Elilson understands his body as a possibility for transport and of listening as the main constituents for creation. In this polymorphic terrain, body and city are synonyms that alternate scales. In many of his works, an action triggers an encounter that, later, is inserted in the field of art, through public readings. Written language, however, does not appear in an isolated way, but works as an instigator for new encounters that unfold into new actions in a permanent rewriting.
Elilson's works are the result of an almost grammatical delirium. The artist distorts the spoken and written language and extracts adequate neologisms from the encounters and confrontations that characterize his displacements. His actions sound like scores on the public space in which discoveries and encounters overlap in layers in a flow between gestures, looks, writings and orality.
By investigating the interrelationships between performance and urban mobility, whether on foot or on trains, Elilson builds a layered system of images that trigger the creative process which materialize in actions, performances, urban interventions, texts, books, installations and sound pieces which through the particular, attain the simplicity that characterizes the universal.
Marcos Gallon, JUly, 2021
*Res verso was on view at Vermelho's courtyard between the 2nd and the 31st of July 2021. -
Diástole, 2019
Fabrics in primary colors are covering outlets of air exhaustion tubes of subway stations. Passersby are asked to write words on the fabrics. Words for the city, about the city, in the city, vibrating with the force of the wind produced by the duality of nature / machinery. Conversations move through the words, the colors and the movement of the materials. Benches are available for those who want to sit and chat for a while. At the end, the fabrics are verticalized by the wind, which shakes the words through the space and transmutes into a colorful blaze.
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Chuva de Direitos [Rain of rights], 2018
Giant work permits, silk-screened on fabric, measuring 170 cm x 110 cm, are launched from high-rise buildings. The action, as the title suggests, is a tribute to the work “Chuva de Dinheiro (Rain of money)” (1983-1985), by artists Márcia X and Ana Cavalcanti.
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Chuva de Direitos, 2018screen printing on fabric170 x 110 cmEdition of 24 + 1 AP
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Fa(r)dado, 2018 *
During December 13th, 2018, recalling 50 years of AI-5*, a 1000 red envelopes were dropped from high-rise buildings into busy streets. All envelopes contained a copy of the anti-militarist speech given by Márcio Moreira Alves in September 1968, and a silk-screened card on metafilm paper (mirror) with the phrase “Didn't he see I was wearing my clother for school, Mom?”. (sentence said by student Marcus Vinícius, 14, killed by the police 50 years after Márcio Moreira Alves' speech).
*Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5) was the fifth of seventeen major decrees issued by the military dictatorship in the years following the 1964 coup d'état in Brazil. AI-5, the toughest of all Institutional Acts, was issued by President Artur da Costa e Silva on December 13, 1968. This resulted in the loss of mandates for anti-military members of both congress and senate; interventions ordered by the president in municipal and state governments, and also in the suspension of any constitutional guarantees that eventually resulted in the institutionalization of torture, commonly used as an instrument by the state. (source: Wikipidia)
*[Play on words with "Uniformed" and “destined to”] -
Born in Recife in 1991, Elilson is a graduate of Universidade Federal do Pernambuco [UFPE] with a Master’s degree in Arts and Performance from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [UFRJ]. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis at Universidade de São Paulo [USP]. He presented his performance “Gota (Drop) – oral exposition #20” in the frame of the 15th edition of Mostra de Performance Arte Verbo, Galeria Vermelho in 2019. In 2018, Elilson received the EDP prize at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, and the Rumos Itaú Cultural. Elilson lives and works in São Paulo.
photo: Anette Carla Alencar -
Universal Particular text: Marcos Gallon; other texts: Elilson; 'Res verse' photos: Filipe Berndt; 'Res verse' video: Filipe Berndt; 'Fa(r)dado' photos: Renata Vieira, Aline Macedo; photos 'Rain of Rights': Carolina Calcavecchia, Anette Carla Alencar; photos 'Rain of Rights' (object): Flávia França; 'Diastole' photos: Renata Vieira, Júlia Fontes.