How romantic is this?
(click photo for video tour)
Bet you were all wondering when I would get around to exploiting the romantic nature of tiles. This post, I didn't even have to try. Just loving tile does not constitute a full-fledged romance. But how about this-
A Brazilian industrialist named Bernardo Paz is a bit of a modern day Fitzcarraldo who, instead of bringing opera to Amazonia, has brought his serious passion for contemporary art to an historic region of Brazil (Brumadinho, to be exact).
Brumadinho, Brazil
His 3000 acre mega-campus is called the Instituto Cultural Inhotim and exhibits one of the most significant collections of contemporary art including the works of 500 artists such as Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles, Chris Burden, Matthew Barney, Doug Aitken and Janet Cardiff.
(the grounds)
So that's a lot of love of art. However here's the romantic/tile connection. One of the more significant pavilions in the instituto has been dedicated to his wife, the renowned Brazilian artist Adriana Varejao. And Adriana's work uses ordinary tiles as her medium and her canvas. They have largely been a vast and sometimes macabre exploration. But the work featured in the top floor of her striking pavilion is beyond beautiful.
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I've always been enchanted by the classic tile standard- majolica.
Adriana's pavilion is a giant deconstruction of majolica tiles and her subsequent reconstruct creates a "landscape tsunami" allowing the viewer to swim in the brushstrokes and celebration of pattern that can often be taken for granted when viewing a typical majolica installation.
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All that to say- this space is a modern majolica cathedral.
Check back tomorrow for a tour of some of the other pavilions and grounds of the Instituto Cultural Inhotim.