What lives in the zone between the world of objects and the realm of music? A Song for Rio brings together a group of Brazilian and international artists who each in their own way attempt to answer this question by undertaking a poetic investigation of the intersection of art and music.
Working across a wide range of media from sculpture and photography to drawing and film, each of these artists investigates the connections between music and the ways in which our personal and collective memories are shaped by it. Some of them create works that invoke a subtle dissonance in the mind of the viewer by creating silent objects that paradoxically suggest the haunting presence of songs that cannot be heard. Other artists ask us to engage with their works physically in order to activate and experience them in the here and now by sending out rhythms and melodies into the space of the gallery. Still others play with both the personal and historical resonances of music as they are manifested, for example, in the visual language of album cover art or classical musical notation. Each of these artists in their own way map a territory between our bodies and our minds, between sight and sound, and between ourselves and the others who surround us and make up our world. So, what does live in the zone between objects and music, or rather between the concrete and the ephemeral? Caetano Veloso suggests the answer to this question. It's someone singing far from here whose voice echoes in the expanse and hopes to be heard.