Waltercio Caldas
The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas
October 27, 2013–January 19, 2014
Blanton Museum of Art
MLK and Congress
Austin, Texas
Guest curator: Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
The Blanton Museum of Art and the Fundação Iberê Carmargo (Brazil) have co-organized the first comprehensive career survey of artist Waltercio Caldas. Celebrating the accomplishments of one of Brazil’s leading contemporary artists, The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas features over seventy objects and installations from the 1960s through the present. On loan from the artist and from leading private and public collections in Brazil and the U.S., each work exemplifies Caldas’s rigorous aesthetic and subtle poetic sensibility. Seen together in this special, artist-designed installation, the works extend Caldas’s formal and philosophical investigations, posing questions about perception for each museum visitor. The exhibition’s international tour concludes with its largest manifestation at the Blanton, following recent presentations at two Brazilian venues—the Fundação Iberê Carmargo in Porto Alegre and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas is accompanied by a major publication, co-published by the Blanton and UT Press, with contributions by Robert Storr, Richard Shiff and exhibition curator Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro.
