Wanderings: Between Prints and Rhinoceroses
Helena Kanaan

On Thursday, June 8th, the exhibition Wanderings: Between Printmaking and Rhinoceroses was inaugurated, presented by the Brazilian Embassy alongside the National Ministry of Culture of Argentina. The opening was attended by the Brazilian Ambassador Sérgio Danese, the Sub-secretary of Cultural Cooperation Dr. Antonio Beun, the exhibition curator Mrs. Helena Kaan, and Alicia Candiani –founder and artistic director of Proyecto´ace in Buenos Aires–.

The exhibition is based on the project coordinated by the artist Helena Kanaan (Brazil); in the scope of the Nucleus of Printed Art of the Institute of Arts of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The proposal was developed in November 2015, on the occasion of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Dürer’s Rhinoceros, name by which the woodcut engraving created by Albrecht Dürer in 1515 is generically known. Since its creation the project has already visited Brazil and Paraguay, with works by invited artists from Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Germany.

ABOUT PRINTMAKING, WORDS, IMAGINATION: 500 YEARS OF GANDA (by Helena Kanaan, curator)

In 1515 a rhinoceros roamed the streets of Lisbon, the beginning of an event in which diplomatic relations, art, history, imagination, science, and Albrecht Dürer converged. 500 years later, an exhibition of visual works reverberates techniques, technologies, and attitudes that respond to the subjectivities sketched between the original print and the investigative journey of an iconic image.

Techniques, cartographies, writings, and matrices are organized in an aesthetic investigation by the Nucleus of Printed Art of the Institute of Arts, UFRGS, Brazil. Using as a starting point the work Rhinoceros 1515, a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, artists from five countries present contaminations and visual mutations hybridized by technology and manual techniques. From the texture of the wood to the pixel, an iconographic and iconological survival of a rhinoceros that was proof of the dominion of new worlds. A zoopoetic that brings to the surface the memory and the updating of diplomatic borders and technical rules, disseminated by the concept of printing.

ABOUT PRINTMAKING, WORDS, IMAGINATION: 500 YEARS OF GANDA (by Alicia Candiani)

The story of an artist (Albrecht Dürer) who represents what he never saw (a rhinoceros) creating an “admirably unfaithful” image that was considered a reliable description during the next three centuries. Until today, it remains the most celebrated animal image in Art History, which leads us to reflect on the power of images and the “legitimacy” of their verisimilitude through printed media.

19 visual artists who use print/digital media as part of our artistic practices were invited to participate in this project, and dialogue with the Rhinoceros Ganda. As a result, Wanderings… presents the deconstruction of this iconic symbol. It has been re-signified, denied, described in its mistakes, relocated, or shown without a fixed course. With more questions than answers, we allow ourselves to explore all the edges of the printmaking tradition and their meanings in the contemporary world.