Patricia Osses
11 May - 20 Jun 2009
PATRICIA OSSES
"John ́s House"
May 11 - June 20, 2009
Project-room
In her first gallery solo show, Patricia Osses presents a group of works made from the experience of inhabiting the house where the playwright John Osborne has lived, in England. Using the local architecture and literature as the main references, Patricia took part in in the residency sponsored by Artist Links (British Council / Arts Council) in 2008, living among London and Shropshire, the most rural region of the country.
"Houses are books with very thick pages". This sentence, from a previous work of her, was a starting point to this project. The reference to rooms of houses of a place where she had never been before, came from the stories and novels of British writers like Lewis Carrol, Virginia Woolf, Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. Patricia searched houses that belonged to writers and ended up to live in one of them, which became the works’ theme and support, denominated The Hurst. The house was built by the end of the 18th century, on a rural property, and its last owner was the English playwright John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger (1956), a emblematic work of the modern English drama which generated the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and other writers of his generation who used the severity and realism in contrast to previous escapism productions.
Provided by the Arvon Foundation, an institution that provides residencies of literary criation to writers, the house was closed, empty and uninhabitable for five years, awaiting for restoration since the death of the writer and his wife. In order to fill its unoccupied rooms and at the same time to respect that empty, Patricia used mainly ephemeral and intangible elements in the works, such as sound, light, the reflection of a mirror, flowers and plants collected in the area, the contrast of colors .
The work of John Osborne worked as a fundamental reference of the house’s recent past. The focus was also to establish a relationship between the house architecture, the light of the place, the language, the culture, the city and the country, the weather, the people, the “move around”... the inhabit as a way to deeply establish a relationship with the place.
Mirror, the first work in this exhibition, invites to a journey by the desolate house interiors. It is a photographic essay of 29 images (27 x 40 cm) that record the internal spaces through the reflection of a round and concave mirror. The mirror was placed on the walls and floors of each room to create the images. The distortions and imperfections of the 200 years surface, end up to aproximate the reflection closer to the painting than to the photography, taking us into more intense colors interiors, more brilliant and transparent light, and curved perspective. The painters Van Eyck, Vermeer and Velazquez are direct references, as well as the book "Through the Looking-Glass ", by Lewis Carroll, in an old edition found in the nearest village. The mirror turns into a giant eye hanging by the walls of many colors, through which we see corridors, gaps and corners of each room of the house.
Purple Green is a photographic essay of 07 images (100 x 70 cm) which brings us a performance held in the house outside spaces, woods and fields around. The landscape was inherent part of the house and its windows: according to John Osborne, he had the best view of England. The artist stands in the landscape, involved in 50 meters of fabric, and walks around, leaving behind a purple trail: the tail of the non-ending dress. The precise purple tone came from the Indian silk, in a courious paradox of setting the complementary opposite of the England green fields. In the landscape, a disguised horse, a lake, a tower, monumental trees show its size and its unreality, its potential for fairytale, as opposed to the presence of the female figure.
In the gallery mezzanine is projected John's House, a 30 minutes video composed by smaller films of 1 to 3 minutes, that correspond to each room of the house and are presented in a sucessive loop. In the film, the British vocal improvisator Phil Minton "sings" and moves by bedrooms, living rooms, basement, under the stairs, the entrance hall. The proposal made to the singer was to fill the interiors empty with the voice of a man singing alone. Phil Minton’s movements were directed and filmed by the artist, as well as his sound reaction to the different colors, scents, sizes, echoes and lights of each room. All possibilities of a voice (melodies, breaths, words, whispers, roars, murmurs, chords, explosions and breaks) in an area for long silent.
Finally, at the bottom of the gallery a monitor displays Green House, a loop sequence of photos: a single image that, over the time, reveals a subtle movement from frame to frame. The green house was almost empty before the installation. It was the first work to be realized during the residency in the early spring.
Plants and flowers were collected in the gardens of the house and hanged covering the internal glass wall of the facade. Behind this alive curtain, that fills all the space, a body presses itself against the glass, showing only an arm, a leg, a neck, the income of the dress, exposing itself without ever revealing its identity.
About the artist:
Patricia Osses (Santiago de Chile, 1971), lives and works in São Paulo.
Recent exhibitions: John's House - a work in progress, Beaconsfield, London (2008), Narrativas, Casa da Cultura, Ribeirão Preto (2007), Novas Direções, Galeria Oeste, São Paulo; Meca - Temporada de Projetos, Paço das Artes, São Paulo; Trilhas Metragens, SESC Paulista, São Paulo; Do corpo à casa, Da casa à rua, SESC Vila Mariana, São Paulo (2006); Ocupação, Paço das Artes, São Paulo; 4Hype - Arte e Música eletrônicas, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo; Centro Universitário Maria Antonia; Visualidade Nascente 14, São Paulo (2005).
"John ́s House"
May 11 - June 20, 2009
Project-room
In her first gallery solo show, Patricia Osses presents a group of works made from the experience of inhabiting the house where the playwright John Osborne has lived, in England. Using the local architecture and literature as the main references, Patricia took part in in the residency sponsored by Artist Links (British Council / Arts Council) in 2008, living among London and Shropshire, the most rural region of the country.
"Houses are books with very thick pages". This sentence, from a previous work of her, was a starting point to this project. The reference to rooms of houses of a place where she had never been before, came from the stories and novels of British writers like Lewis Carrol, Virginia Woolf, Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. Patricia searched houses that belonged to writers and ended up to live in one of them, which became the works’ theme and support, denominated The Hurst. The house was built by the end of the 18th century, on a rural property, and its last owner was the English playwright John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger (1956), a emblematic work of the modern English drama which generated the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and other writers of his generation who used the severity and realism in contrast to previous escapism productions.
Provided by the Arvon Foundation, an institution that provides residencies of literary criation to writers, the house was closed, empty and uninhabitable for five years, awaiting for restoration since the death of the writer and his wife. In order to fill its unoccupied rooms and at the same time to respect that empty, Patricia used mainly ephemeral and intangible elements in the works, such as sound, light, the reflection of a mirror, flowers and plants collected in the area, the contrast of colors .
The work of John Osborne worked as a fundamental reference of the house’s recent past. The focus was also to establish a relationship between the house architecture, the light of the place, the language, the culture, the city and the country, the weather, the people, the “move around”... the inhabit as a way to deeply establish a relationship with the place.
Mirror, the first work in this exhibition, invites to a journey by the desolate house interiors. It is a photographic essay of 29 images (27 x 40 cm) that record the internal spaces through the reflection of a round and concave mirror. The mirror was placed on the walls and floors of each room to create the images. The distortions and imperfections of the 200 years surface, end up to aproximate the reflection closer to the painting than to the photography, taking us into more intense colors interiors, more brilliant and transparent light, and curved perspective. The painters Van Eyck, Vermeer and Velazquez are direct references, as well as the book "Through the Looking-Glass ", by Lewis Carroll, in an old edition found in the nearest village. The mirror turns into a giant eye hanging by the walls of many colors, through which we see corridors, gaps and corners of each room of the house.
Purple Green is a photographic essay of 07 images (100 x 70 cm) which brings us a performance held in the house outside spaces, woods and fields around. The landscape was inherent part of the house and its windows: according to John Osborne, he had the best view of England. The artist stands in the landscape, involved in 50 meters of fabric, and walks around, leaving behind a purple trail: the tail of the non-ending dress. The precise purple tone came from the Indian silk, in a courious paradox of setting the complementary opposite of the England green fields. In the landscape, a disguised horse, a lake, a tower, monumental trees show its size and its unreality, its potential for fairytale, as opposed to the presence of the female figure.
In the gallery mezzanine is projected John's House, a 30 minutes video composed by smaller films of 1 to 3 minutes, that correspond to each room of the house and are presented in a sucessive loop. In the film, the British vocal improvisator Phil Minton "sings" and moves by bedrooms, living rooms, basement, under the stairs, the entrance hall. The proposal made to the singer was to fill the interiors empty with the voice of a man singing alone. Phil Minton’s movements were directed and filmed by the artist, as well as his sound reaction to the different colors, scents, sizes, echoes and lights of each room. All possibilities of a voice (melodies, breaths, words, whispers, roars, murmurs, chords, explosions and breaks) in an area for long silent.
Finally, at the bottom of the gallery a monitor displays Green House, a loop sequence of photos: a single image that, over the time, reveals a subtle movement from frame to frame. The green house was almost empty before the installation. It was the first work to be realized during the residency in the early spring.
Plants and flowers were collected in the gardens of the house and hanged covering the internal glass wall of the facade. Behind this alive curtain, that fills all the space, a body presses itself against the glass, showing only an arm, a leg, a neck, the income of the dress, exposing itself without ever revealing its identity.
About the artist:
Patricia Osses (Santiago de Chile, 1971), lives and works in São Paulo.
Recent exhibitions: John's House - a work in progress, Beaconsfield, London (2008), Narrativas, Casa da Cultura, Ribeirão Preto (2007), Novas Direções, Galeria Oeste, São Paulo; Meca - Temporada de Projetos, Paço das Artes, São Paulo; Trilhas Metragens, SESC Paulista, São Paulo; Do corpo à casa, Da casa à rua, SESC Vila Mariana, São Paulo (2006); Ocupação, Paço das Artes, São Paulo; 4Hype - Arte e Música eletrônicas, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo; Centro Universitário Maria Antonia; Visualidade Nascente 14, São Paulo (2005).