Marcos Gallon returns as curator of Performance sector at SP-Arte 2020

Please note: SP-Arte 2020 has been suspended due to force majeure. Soon, find out more about the São Paulo International Art Festival 17th edition.

For the second time, Marcos Gallon, artistic director of Verbo – Performance Art Festival, curates the Performance sector at SP-Arte. While last year the actions he chose reflected upon the tools and strategies that each artist uses to create a work of this nature, in 2020, the performances highlight the artist’s role as a critical agent and advocate of transformations.

“Positioned across the Bienal Pavilion, the five selected works raise latent political debates, either through the artists’ experience or in the proposal of the work itself. The performances also follow different modes of documentation, possibilities of acquisition or different presentations of the artist’s body”, says the curator.

Again, the acquisition by SP-Arte of one of the five pieces is part of the program. The work will be acquired and donated to the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. In 2019, the performance “Atoritoleituralogosh”, by Cristiano Lenhardt (Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel), was the winner of SP-Arte Acquisition Award and is now part of the institution’s collection. The objective is to reinforce the presence of performance in the commercial and institutional realms of art. “We intend to show the plurality of dynamics that constitute the field of Performance Art, highlighting issues such as its inclusion in public or private collections”, emphasizes Gallon.

The Curator

Bachelor in Philosophy from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). As a dancer and choreographer, he worked in several dance companies of São Paulo. From 1993 to 1996, he managed the Cia. Terceira Dança in São Paulo. He lived in Berlin for four years (1997-2001), where his research in the field of contemporary dance was broadened, having collaborated with several choreographers from the local scene. Between 2003 and 2004, he created the Corpo de Baile project, a collective composed by dancers, performers, designers, actors, and visual artists. He currently works as the artistic director of Verbo – Performance Art Festival, an annual platform for performance art, created by Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo) in 2005. He is the coauthor of “Das, um olhar contemporâneo sobre um trabalho da Cia. Terceira Dança” (Annablume, 1995), and the organizer of “Verbo – mostra de performance arte” (Ed. Tijuana, 2015).

Performance Sector in 2019

For the first time since its creation in 2015, the Performance sector exclusively featured works of artists represented by galleries that regularly participate in SP-Arte, with the aim of expanding the participation of this kind of work in the commercial and institutional circuits of the visual arts. Made possible by the Municipal Cultural Projects Support Program (ProMac), of the Municipal Culture Secretariat of the City of São Paulo, the first edition of SP-Arte Acquisition Award donated the performance of Cristiano Lenhardt (Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel), one of the artists of the sector, to the Pinacoteca do Estado.