Lot 19: Linha Equinoctial III (Equatorial Line III), 1999

Linha Equinoctial III (Equatorial Line III), 1999
Oil on canvas, colored strings and porcelain. Installation dimensions variable; 142 3/4 x 272 x 127 in. (362.6 x 691 x 322.6 cm) as illustrated. 

  New York, Lehmann Maupin, Adriana Varejão, January 7 – February 12, 2000

  Lehmann Maupin, New York

Incorporating both popular and historical imagery in her paintings, sculptures, and installations, Rio-born Adriana Varejão constructs visually striking artworks that allude to the roots of Brazil’s colonized history. As evidenced in Linha Equinoctial III Varejão sets up a complex dialogue using broken pieces of blue and white porcelain, painted renderings of the ocean, and colored string to create a dynamic installation that draws on the history of Portugal’s colonization of Brazil; and the bringing of Chinese porcelain across the ocean to South America. Macau, the former Portuguese colony off the coast of China, was the cultural epicenter of what later became Brazil’s thriving tradition of decorative tiling. In the present lot, Varejão poignantly recalls this influence and produces a work that is not only visually arresting, but also loaded with cultural significance.
"Adriana Varejão’s work almost invariably evokes a sense of continuous passage, a journey among divergent images, cultures, times and spaces. It alludes to the notion of the universe in constant expansion and transformation, of an imagery infinitely projected onto the other. It follows an intricate and paradoxical path toward the baroque, an empowering poetic strategy designed to address the complexities of cultural constructions, influences and exchanges by examining, appropriating and remapping the vast body of images, forms and ideas disseminated by the Europeans during the colonization of Brazil," (R. Carvajal, “Travel Chronicles:TheWork of Adriana Varejão,” New Histories, Boston, 1996, p. 168-169).
Linha Equinoctial III is a worthy example of Varejão’s creative process.The work’s tactile quality recalls one of the artist’s main sources of inspiration—the ItalianTransvanguardia, whose goal was to make sensual experience the main objective of painting. In Linha Equinoctial III, Varejão uses this avant garde concept of the 1980s as a springboard, and takes it to the next level to create a work that is visually baroque and poetic in significance.