Todays Archeology/en

Today's Archeology

Jean Scheurer

During the International Congress of Arts in 1959, where the city of Brasília was presented to professionals around the world, the french chancellor André Malraux commented to the architect Oscar Niemeyer that the city was one of the examples of architecture most important since the Greek columns. And he added: could not stop to think how beautiful Brasilia's ruins would be in the future.

Fifteen years later, in a letter that he sent to the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC) along the art work 'Today's Archeology', Jean Scheurer explains clearly that 'demonstrate the ephemeral side of our civilization is also a reflection on the man through its buildings, objects and wastes'.

That was held in 1974 and exhibited for the first time at an exhibition prospects are not only data of note, but deserve renewed consideration. If the intention of the organizer of the exhibition of 1974 at the MAC, Walter Zanini, was a survey on the future of art, has agreed to exhibit the work of Scheurer. Not for the clairvoyance to predict directly the artist's importance in the Brazilian artistic context (which unfortunately is still virtually unknown), but because they knew symbolize Scheurer summarizes the procedure "archaeological" following the ruling until today.

The title — Today's Archeology — and the artist's declaration, show that the procedure in question refers to the way the material vestiges are analyzed to study the past. However, the title itself suggests that it is not a mere representation of archeology of today, but today itself. This is not about how archeology is done in general, but an archaeological activity that is practiced on the present itself. Scheurer shows that through it we leave to see the reality of the present and we project on it a fantasy image and deceptively crystalline. The ruins of the present lost its historical values and are enhanced by a kind of projective value, they become mere artifacts of speculation for what they could be.