Caio Reisewitz has created an artistic intervention in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, titled “Suspendre el Cel”. To Suspend the Sky is the artist’s reference to activists shamans Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak, alluding to Indigenous practices and beliefs of Amazonian people that the earth is made out of the sky, so the sky might as well engulf it back should we not respect ancestral knowledge. 

Addressing urgent issues affecting Brazil and people and nature worldwide, the exhibition organized by Prats Nogueras Blanchard and Fundació Mies van der Rohe, within the framework of Barcelona Gallery Weekend, will be open to October 9.

Caio Reisewitz is a renowned Brazilian photographer known for his large-scale color photographs that explore the complex relationship between urbanization and the natural environment. His work often juxtaposes dense urban structures with the feral landscapes of Brazil’s forests, highlighting the tensions between development and ecological preservation. Reisewitz’s distinctive use of digital collage and layering techniques creates surreal compositions that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. He has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the International Center of Photography. His work is included in major collections such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Through his photographic practice, Reisewitz prompts critical reflection on issues of land use, deforestation, and cultural identity in contemporary Brazil.

In this short interview, Reisewitz outlines the motifs behind the exhibition and his work.

In your photography, a theme of collaging and overlaying architecture and deep, dark and heavy natural environment is foregrounded. As if they both belong to the same world of some higher order. Amazonian forest is a great inspiration to your work, as well as the city. It seems these are two polarities in entanglement, deforestation and urbanization. How do you see the relationship between forest and urban structures?

For me, in my work, it is very important to observe nature in its intact state, in its altered state—whether through destruction or the invasion of slums into the heart of major urban centers—and in the sense of construction, such as the culture of botanical gardens. Throughout history, I have always been walking in this field. In this field, I am always walking, which is the field of the representation of nature.

On one hand, we can see a motif and the experience of being immersed in the forest and on the other, looking at the landscape from a distance. What is your relationship with the landscape? What kind of landscapes do you dream about? How you then frame the dreams.

I have a very strong relationship with the nature of Brazil because I grew up alongside it, both in the mountains around São Paulo and by the sea, which is about an hour from São Paulo. You have to go down a mountain to reach a giant forest called the Atlantic Forest. When I had my experience of living outside the forest, outside Brazil, I realized how important it was—the lack of this nature in my life was profound. I lived for nine years in Germany to pursue my studies, and the thing I missed the most was Brazilian nature. So I learned to observe Brazilian nature. Being outside of nature made me an observer. And, of course, there were several influences, such as in German Romantic painting, like Caspar David Friedrich, with landscapes, as well as Brazilian landscaping with the incredible work of Roberto Burle Marx. Thus, I establish a relationship between the representation of the landscape and the landscape as it is. So I live in this field between the representation of the landscape and the landscape itself.

The aesthetic appreciation of landscape developed from framing the landscape in paintings. In the installation Suspendre el Cel plants both escape the frame yet frame and are framed by architecture. What kind of view are you presenting by juxtaposing the emblematic pavilion of modern architecture and tropical and Mediterranean plants? What kind of context are you creating by merging the inanimate with the living, with art, architecture and a metaphor of nature through the use of plants? 

I intend to talk about structures, colonization, the built environment, and the representation of the image within all of this. In Brazil, this is a very important topic, as well as the issue of deforestation caused by agribusiness. The structure of a space or the disruption of this space, built or planned by Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe, tried to present a new way of interpreting a space. The space proposed here is completely connected to the relationship with nature, whether in the Amazon, in any forest, or in the world’s lungs. This is a very important structure that shapes social inequality and economic interests in Brazil, and not just in Brazil, but worldwide, to extract commodities.

Published on October 3, 2024