Arena consists of a tree trunk cast in bronze, about 4 m in diameter by 1.25 m high, with the model of an empty arena carved on its top. Installed on a floor constructed in such a way as to refer to the deformation caused by roots in a floor made of concrete blocks, typical of those used in sidewalks, the operation resonates the immeasurability dimension of the work.
The work of art projects the circumcenter movements of the tree’s growth and, like a calendar, overlays to the natural time of its growth the cultural time, alluded to by the arena; an architectural element created by man. The rings on the trunk of a tree are records of its lifetime, indications of the duration that constitutes it as a tree, a natural element. The arenas, on the other hand, architectural constructions from classical Greece, made to accommodate a large number of people in order to watch performances of all kinds, are seminal elements built by culture.
The work relates the cut to the cultural construction, to the civilizing event. The empty theater is an allusion to the social stage where events and daily performance echo and unfold.
The stairs, both the ones to access the work and those represented inside the arena, are articulated between the physical experimentation to access the work and the represented one, inside the Arena. The passage from something physically experienced to something virtually glimpsed, through representation, inside the sculpture.
Vanderlei Lopes
Terra Boa, Paraná, 1973
He currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil
vanderleilopes.com
Vanderlei Lopes’ artistic practice goes through a trajectory of experimentations with various mediums that culminate in sculptures, objects, or situations stamped from everyday life, transformed, and perpetuated in materials such as gunpowder, gold, ceramics, bronze, or sound. Lopes’ works articulate and problematize the various social and cultural milieus in which they are inserted or for which they are thought. Notions of the process of social and cultural construction such as language, actions, spatial relations of circulation, hierarchies, and various cultural values - from religious, heritage, and market relations - are articulated and discussed in his work. The interest in questions of temporality arise in constant friction, contributing mentions of specific historical distances and the immediate here-and-now. He majored in visual arts at Unesp - Universidade Estadual Paulista, in 2000, and since the 1990s has been part of exhibitions in several museums and galleries.
