IOLE DE FREITAS, 1970S / IMAGE AS PRESENCE

 

Iole Present

The presentation of Iole de Freitas' work from the 1970s allows us not only to become acquainted with or revisit the artist’s lesser-known oeuvre, but also to reflect upon the singularity of the artistic experimentation developed in those years by a woman artist who dialogued with photography and film. From these two expanded fields of art emerge a reinvention of the representation of the body, made present by its own image and movement.

Beyond conventional artistic genres, definable by the nature of their specific mediums, and beyond photography and film as autonomous genres, Iole de Freitas researches conceptual lingos that invent new forms that condense time in space, articulating the photographic and film images she records as instants that structure and expand the work's place. This “Iole in photography and film” also reveals a woman artist who appropriates the existing means of image production and reproduction in her time to transform them into new poetics. Aware of her body, which she assumes as movement, Iole constructs the poetics of the fragment from the production and editing of the image. The body’s register becomes the genesis of space, in configurations that already hint at some of the fundamental issues in the artist’s later work. When Iole was invited to gather and revisit her work from the 1970s, she did not let herself be tempted by the simple anthological collection of her works, but moved towards the “third bank of the river”, mounting an exhibition that is assumed as a new movement in her path as an artist. This is one of those shows in which “the exhibition is the work”, without betraying the specific nature of each of the featured pieces.

The discovery of these Images as Presence" would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and dazzling inventiveness that Iole de Freitas dedicated to the exhibition’s entire construction process. Instituto Moreira Salles is extremely grateful to the artist for her extraordinary availability and generosity. Furthermore, this exhibition would not be what it is without Sonia Salzstein's research and rigorous and assiduous work. She is its curator and author of the main monographic essay in the book, whose edition she also coordinated, assisted in these tasks by the diligent and competent collaboration of Leonardo Nones, assistant curator. To both we express our greatest gratitude, extended to everyone at IMS who made this possible, and also to the Contemporary Art Institute, which has preserved and protected the artist’s archives with such care.

 

Marcelo Araujo
General Director

João Fernandes
Artistic Director

Instituto Moreira Salles