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.

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.

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.