3ª Mercosur Biennial

With the slogan "art everywhere" the 3 rd Mercosur Biennial included Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Peru as guest country. The 3 rd Biennial represented a fundamental period of transition towards a new level of organization and professionalism, which would be consolidated in the fourth edition. With no defined theme, the third edition was known more for its "city of containers". Part of the exhibition took place inside a series of freight containers in a 60,000-m2 area of the Parque Maurício Sirotsky Sobrinho, with 51 containers housing works by 51 artists. This Biennial was also strongly recognized for seeking to map emerging work and promote a vision for the future while giving over a large space to the work of young artists. The curators sought to emphasize the nomadic nature of contemporary art. In addition to using unusual spaces not traditionally associated with cultural events, other segments of the exhibition, such as the performance event in the São Pedro Psychiatric Hospital in which eighteen artists showed their works in the premises and grounds of the sumptuous hospital building dating from the Imperial Provincial Government, also fulfilled the aim of showing the transitory nature of contemporary art. While seeking to provide a broad overview of contemporary Latin American art, the 3 rd Biennial also included a parallel segment of special exhibitions shown in the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul and the Usina do Gasômetro. The historical exhibitions of Edvard Munch and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera both had special rooms in the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul. The Rivera exhibition brought 44 works from more than 50 years of the career the master of Mexican Muralism to South America for the first time. In an attempt to preserve the experimental and emergent spirit that was a feature of the 2 nd Biennial, the curators proposed a view of painting which avoided an historical or nostalgic approach and promoted a dialogue with other two- and three-dimensional art-forms. The exhibition entitled Pictorial Poetics sought to accentuate the expansion of painting beyond its conventional limits. The artist of honor at the 3 rd Mercosur Biennial was Rafael França. Admission to the 3 rd Biennial was free and estimated attendance figures of 600,000 greatly exceeding the initial target. Twelve artists from this edition showed their works in the recently-opened Caixa Federal Cultural Centre in Brasília/DF, as part of the touring program. The photographer Gal Oppido showed a photographic essay about setting up the 3 rd Biennial in a kind of "making of" documentary showing the work that went into organizing the event.