Rodrigo Cass: libera abstrahere

Edited by curator Ana Paula Cohen, Rodrigo Cass: libera abstrahere presents a broad approach of the artist’s work. In its first part, the book introduces Manifest Material 2021-2023), currently at the Centre Pompidou collection, an installation where concrete structures of various formats were created to serve as surfaces for video projection. In its second part, it offers an extensive selection of works throughout the artist’s career, revealing connections and developments present in his work.

Exploring the concepts of matter and spirituality, Cass builds his work in dialogue; Lygia Clark, Eva Hesse and Lina Bo Brad are a few examples of artists whose works appear in homage and citation, added to references to Byzantine iconography. Tempera, a technique used by Byzantine painters, was the first artistic practice studied and practiced by Cass, during his religious education at the Monastery of Transfiguration, with Camaldolese monks, in Mogi das Cruzes, in 2001.

Manifest Material, composed of 12 paintings, 12 videos, and an artistic manifest in writing divided in 12 parts, shows Cass’s use of color symbology and light’s immanent power. Meanwhile, the book's second part is dedicated to works that, between political and poetical, encompass Cass’s production between 2011 and 2023, not necessarily following chronology. In the editor's words: “Turning and returning is part of the everlasting process, unless one reaches illumination. The artist’s way is similar, sometimes reaching high levels of manifestation in its work, and other times experiencing the fall back to earth, to the worldly, giving way, ini sequence, to the labor, the process of continuous transformation of matter through practice.”

Rodrigo Cass: libera abstrahere features an essay from the editor about the artist’s work, as well as an essay about Manifest Material written by critic and Art History PhD Frédéric Paul, currently a curator at Centre Pompidou in Paris.

About the artist
Rodrigo Cass was born in São Paulo in 1983, where he lives and works. Cass’s first artistic education was as an iconographer at the Monastery of Transfiguration, in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo, in 2001. Between 2000 and 2008, he lived at the Carmel Convent as a Carmelite religionist of the Order of Carmel. In 2006, he concluded his bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at the Santa Marcelina College in São Paulo, where he studied with artists such as Leda Catunda, Raquel Garbelotti, Arthur Lescher and Shirley Paes Leme. He studied two years (2007-2008) of Philosophy and Theology at the Jesuit College in Belo Horizonte. After leaving the convent, he participated in the Pampulha Fellowship Project in Belo Horizonte (2010-2011), under direction of curator Ana Paula Cohen, and in PIESP (2011-2012), under direction of curator Adriano Pedrosa and his co-diretor Carla Zacagnini. Since 2014, he’s represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel.

About Ana Paula Cohen (editor)
Ana Paula Cohen is an independent curator, writer and editor. She’s the Graduate Coordinator of Curatorial Studies and Practices at FAAP, and holds a doctorate degree from the Subjectivity Studies Center at PUC-SP. She was a resident curator at the Center for Curatorial Studies, at Bard College, New York, a co-curator of the 28th São Paulo Biennale, and a co-curator at Encuentro Internacional de Medellín, in Colombia. Cohen was a visiting professor at the California College of the Arts graduate program, in San Francisco, the director of the fellowship program Bolsa Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte, and co-director of PIESP (Programa Independente da Escola São Paulo). Among other exhibits, she was a curator for: Embodied Archeology of Architecture and Landscape, at Tel Aviv Museum; On Cohabitation: films by Yael Bartana, at Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada; Cildo Meireles— Inserciones en Circuitos Ideológicos, at Museo de Antioquia, Medellín; Telling Histories — an Archive and Three Case Studies — with Contributions by Mabe Bethônico and Liam Gillick, no Kunstverein München, in Munich.

About Frédéric Paul
Frédéric Paul is an arts critic and a doctor in Ar History. He has acted as a director at Frac Limousin and Domaine de Kerguéhennec before becoming a contemporary arts curator at Mnam-cci/ Centre Georges Pompidou. With a particular interest in the historical conceptual scene (Mel Bochner, Douglas Huebler, Allen Ruppersberg, William Wegman) and, in that journey, in artists such as Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Toni Grand, Shirley Jaffe, Giuseppe Penone, he regularly turns towards the work of some of his contemporaries: Claude Closky, Hubert Duprat, Jochen Lempert, Beatriz Milhazes, Jonathan Monk, Steven Pippin and Barbara Probst. His recent publications include: Guy de Cointet (Paris, Flammarion); Giuseppe Penone/archéologie (Arles, Actes Sud); Sarah Morris (Berlin, August Verlag); Steven Pippin (Paris, Xavier Barral); Beatriz Milhazes (Rio de Janeiro, Cobogó); Barbara Probst (Stuttgart, Hartmann Books); Dorothy Iannone (Paris, Manuella); Shirley Jaffe (Paris, Bernard Chauveau, and Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel); Jochen Lempert (Buchhandlung Walther König); Mirrors of the Portrait (West Bund Museum, Shanghai).

Specifications
Title Rodrigo Cass: libera abstrahere
Artist Rodrigo Cass
Editor Ana Paula Cohen
Text Ana Paula Cohen and Frédéric Paul
Language Portuguese and English
Page count 232
Publisher Cobogó
ISBN 9786556911083
Cover and design Elaine Ramos
Format Hardcover
Size 21 x 26 cm
Year 2023