ME, YOU AND THE MOON. TUNGA AT MAM SÃO PAULO

For the first time ever in Brazil, the installation Eu, Você e a Lua (2015) (Me, You and the Moon) –one of the last major works completed by the artist– will be presented at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo).

ME, YOU AND THE MOON. TUNGA AT MAM SÃO PAULO

Tunga (1952–2016) explored alchemy, psychoanalysis, science and philosophy. Over four decades, he created a unique mythology, in which the issue of immutability and transformation are fundamental.

 

Eu, Você e a Lua (Me, You and the Moon) brings together recurring elements of his oeuvre, such as stones, mirrors, bottles in crystal, plaster or resin, and plates suspended in arcs and rods. The core of the installation is formed by a large, hollow and petrified tree trunk, supported by two tripods. Under the shadow cast by the work in the Glass Room, amber trails almost the entire length of the trunk. The mirrors that compose the work reflect quartz bottles from above and from below.

The work will be shown at MAM as it was originally exhibited in France in 2015, at the Center d’Arts et de Nature, in Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, with gravel flooring, which constitutes the woody and earthy atmosphere of the environment.

 

Tunga used to imagine the human body rebuilt from landscape and for this reason he assembled disparate elements to create a new sensibility. “I call this the ‘countenance of the moon’. What is at play here is the transmutation of the act of viewing into perfume”, stated the artist in an article by Myriam Boutoulle, “Tunga, l’amour, la lune et l’arbre alchimique,” published in 2015.

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