Antonio Ballester Moreno approaches his curatorial project for the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo as a way of contextualising a world based on the intimate relationship that exist between biology and culture, with references to the history of abstraction and its interplay with nature, pedagogy and spirituality. For this purpose, he brings together the work of philosophers, scientists and artists: ‘because we are all creators of our own world, but I understand that such a variety of languages has separated us from a sense of the common, so this proposal focuses on the study of our origins, whether in relation to natural, social or subjective aspects—the three axis that organise the exhibition’, states Ballester Moreno.
Titled sentido/comum [common/sense], his project encompasses educational toys from the historical avant-gardes, artworks from the Escuela de Vallecas (a Spanish avant-garde movement of the 1930s close to surrealism) and works by con temporary artists. Amongst the participants (including the artist-curator himself),the exhibition features the philosopher and educator Friedrich Fröbel (Germany,1782- 1852); Andrea Büttner (Germany,1972); MarkDion (USA,1961), who presents a commissioned project ; and Rafael Sánchez-Mateos Paniagua (Spain,1979),who is a member of the Atenta collective whose research focuses on practices of attention in the field of art. Other than participatingin Ballester Moreno’s show, Paniagua has also contributed to the educational publication of the 33rd Bienal, Conviteà atenção [Invitationto Attention],with a new text written for the occasion.
