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Spent, Clarissa Tossin, 2009, HAM: Sculpture

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Elaine Levin © Clarissa Tossin, ‘Spent’, 2019 – courtesy of the artist Size: Dimensions variable Medium: Porcelain and trash

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/362510

#clarissatossin #harvardartmuseums #museumarchive

Spent, Clarissa Tossin, 2009, HAM: Sculpture

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Elaine Levin © Clarissa Tossin, ‘Spent’, 2019 – courtesy of the artist Size: Dimensions variable Medium: Porcelain and trash

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/362510

#museumarchive #harvardartmuseums #clarissatossin

Clarissa Tossin

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How does it travel? - Clarissa Tossin Made of Brazil’s native latex rubber, Transplanted (VW Brasilia) is a skin-like cast of a Volkswagen Brasilia. This is the first version that the artist was able to import to Los Angeles, as a collapsed copy folded inside her carry-on bag. Parked outside the gallery is the original car from which the latex cast was pulled, brought to the US for Tossin’s Brasilia, Cars, Pools and Other Modernities recently on view at the Hammer Museum. Transplanted (VW Brasilia) starkly conflates the history of rubber production in Brazil with the auto industry. Its delicacy, along with the transfer of accumulated dirt, shows the specificity of use and also a ghostly absence.

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Brasília, Cars, Pools and Other Modernities - Clarissa Tossin Tossin has grown up in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil created by a group of idealist architects including Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa, etc. The capital is the embodiment of a utopian project of the construction of a new and modern nation beyond the traditional Euro-American centric system. The achievement of Brasilia as a sublime and spectacular new modern city – in spite of the complex and uneven developments of social reality and class difference – has demonstrated a distinctive narrative of the circulation and reinvention of modernity: modernization and its ideological and aesthetic models are no longer dominated by the West. Instead, it has been reinvented in different parts of the “developing world” to become enriched and different. Its reinventions have also expressed the vitality and creativity generated by the non-western nations in their negotiations for decolonization, independence and, more importantly, new positions in the global economic, political and cultural system. In turn, with the raise of the powers of these nations, currently marked by the emergence of the South, represented by the “BRICS” (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the made-in-Brazil version of modernity, as both a social model and aesthetic form, are gaining greater and greater influences on the world stage of creation, and impacting the West itself. South America is not simply a backyard for North America’s economic and political interests. It’s also a decisive element to form the reality of North America’s contemporary society itself… Clarissa Tossin’s connection with such a formidable history of creation of a new society has not only been a part of her everyday life but also influenced profoundly her intellectual and artistic work. She started her work in Brazil and has settled in Los Angeles and Houston for the last decade. This personal experience has not only made her an insightful observer of this complex process of development and circulation of the new modernity as well as its geopolitical and cultural significance. The trajectory of her displacements between the south and north Americas and the reflections of an immigrant have also allowed her to be an active participant in this negotiation and to develop an original and critical engagement with the debates on the implication of such a negotiation. And this engagement has become the center of her research and practice. During her stay at the Artpace residency, she has deepened and realized a long-term project that summarizes this commitment, “Brasília, Cars, Pools and Other Modernities.” This complex multimedia installation, with documents, a car, a video and other elements, presents the outcome of an ongoing investigation and intervention to demonstrate the complication of the travel of the “Brazilian modernity” to the US and the misunderstandings between two societies in which modernity signifies very different meanings. Tossin, settling in Los Angeles, discovered the only building in the US designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the father of Brazilian modernity, a communist who believed modernist architecture could provide the ideal home for a new society founded upon the interest of the working class. However, this house, located in Santa Monica, commissioned by a wealthy American family, was designed and built only through correspondent letters between the architect and the client because Niemeyer was not allowed to travel to the US due to his communist background. This story was further complicated by the fact the new owner of the house refused any public access to this historically important house. Tossin, therefore, decided to carry out a performative action to test the ground and proposed us to examine the case critically. She turned herself into a pool cleaner, driving a Volkwagen – a model designed and produced in Brazil as the symbol of Brazil’s modern industrial success and democratization of car culture – from Brasilia to Los Angeres, namely from the Brazilian capital of car culture, or the ideal image of modernist city, to Los Angeles, the American car capital, in order to come to clean the pool of this (in)famous Niemeyer designed house. Bottom image:

As long as I'm driving... - Clarissa Tossin As long as I'm driving..., 2012 paint on parking lot floor dimensions variable Commissioned by Dallas Contemporary. As long as I'm driving, I'm producing. As long as I'm driving, I'm consuming. As long as I'm driving, I'm progressing. As long as I'm driving, I'm multitasking. As long as I'm driving, I'm choosing. As long as I'm driving, I'm believing. As long as I'm driving, I'm engaging. As long as I'm driving, I'm connecting. As long as I'm driving, I'm participating. As long as I'm driving, I'm occupying. As long as I'm driving, As long as I'm driving, As long as I'm driving, As long as I'm driving, I will repeat. As long as I'm driving, I will forget.

text and images from: www.clarissatossin.net