Experimental films, polaroids, “film objects,” and previously unseen works by the Rio de Janeiro-based visual artist will occupy the Cavalariças starting March 28.
The solo exhibition brings together a collection of works in various formats, curated by André Sheik, tracing the artist’s experiences, concerns, travels, and friendships.
The Escola de Artes Visuais (EAV) do Parque Lage announces the exhibition Fílmicas, by Rio-based visual artist Marcos Bonisson, who has been a professor at the institution for ten years. The solo show will occupy the Cavalariças beginning March 28, 2025, with curation by André Sheik.
Bonisson adopted photography, Super 8, and video as his primary fields of work after experimenting with other techniques at the EAV, where he took courses in engraving, painting, and sculpture between 1977 and 1981. At the school, he was a student of Alair Gomes, Constance Brenner, Gianguido Bonfanti, Sergio Santeiro, and Celeida Tostes, among others. Later, he balanced his artistic practice with his work as a teacher and researcher.
“The works in Fílmicas are rotating signs that reflect my life experiences and languages through the passage of time. Some pieces are collages of my own records or those of other authors, making each assembly unique,” reveals Bonisson, noting that the space itself is a constitutive element of the new exhibition. “The architecture of the Cavalariças was decisive for the project’s conception.”
By bringing together works in different media, the first room highlights the versatility of the artist’s production, which explores various languages and formats. An example of this poetic breadth is the set of nine sculptures made of Portuguese stone, collected during Bonisson’s wanderings through Rio and conceptually designated by him as “film objects.”
These pieces share space with the Kinolooks-Noir series (eight black-and-white photos mounted in 21 x 21 cm black boxes). Created in New York between 1985 and 1987, the work emerged from wanderings, bicycle rides, and screen captures of films the artist recorded in the city’s cinemas. “In this series, the procedural situation of selecting and combining random images from the streets relates to the image captured from the screens in contingency,” he explains. Also displayed in black boxes, the Venezianas series presents three black-and-white images selected from records made in the narrow alleys of Venice, Italy, in 2024.
