Marcelo Cidade
Adição por subtração 4 (Addition by Subtraction 4)
Often investigating systems of surveillance and control, Marcelo Cidade is continuously engaged with questions of how we define and protect our personal spaces, on the one hand, and how these protections are trespassed and broken down, on the other. Adição por subtração 4 (Addition by Subtraction) is an intervention into the white cube with both beautiful and intimidating results. The installation is a large rectangular frame created out of shards of clear and colored glass that protrude from the wall. The use of glass fragments is reminiscent of Robert Smithson’s sculpture Map of Glass (Atlantis) (1969), yet the concerns here are very different. The work delineates an interior space and draws the viewer’s attention through the use of aggressive materials, yet there is empty space where we would expect an artwork to be. What is added is ultimately subtracted, since both the “artwork” and the void of the gallery space remain equal.
Marcelo Cidade is an artist of situations, if not a Situationist of a new age, as he drifts through city streets around the world creating actions, interventions, films, photographs or drawings. His interests lie in the possibilities of public space and its connection with the private sphere, he resists forms of constraint and moves freely within the human community and through urban environments. Questioning systems and working in the peripheries or interstices allows Cidade poetic freedom in his artistic practice and open engagement with language, art history and politics. In 2005, he wrote “To resist = to (re) exist” 2000 times in downtown São Paulo.