KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Künstler*innen

Matheus Rocha Pitta

Brasilien

First Stone (Primeira Pedra), 2015, Skulptur, 7 x 7 x 7 cm

A sign on the floor, informs visitors that they may exchange „the first stone found in the streets that fills your hand“ for one of the concrete sculptures. They´re not meant primarily as cheap, reproducible artworks for visitors to take home, as if gearing contemporary art towards mass consumption offered anything but a merely moral resistance to art´s luxury status.

Instead, they are meant to carry the imprint of this minimal crack on the surface of an ideologically reinforced tendency to social and political immobilism. To trade for them is to take part in this communal experience, even if unintentionally, as the gestures have a life of their own. This brings Primeira Pedra far from the proselytism that characterizes much politically-oriented contemporary art while offering a subtler insight into the structures of feeling that currently bind culture and politics.

Sergio Martins

AUFENTHALT
15.04.2016 – 15.04.2017

Stipendiat
KfW Stiftung