José Damasceno (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1968) is one of the most internationally recognised artists on the current Brazilian art scene. Damascus has become the epitome of the role that sculpture and installation has had in Brazil compared to other art forms over the last forty years. Damascene belongs to a generation of Brazilian artists that has managed to create their own language without abandoning the influence of predecessors such as Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica and Cildo Meireles by knowing how to fuse the very same sensory and interactive poetry with a personal universe where nods to surrealism and humour are frequent. Since the early nineties, Damasceno's work has been exhibited in such important institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo as well as in the Venice, Sydney and São Paulo Biennales.
Damasceno accepted the challenge proposed by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía of conceiving a project that interacts not only with its space but for the first time to do it with the public and make them share his inquiries, in such a way that new contexts and dialogues are generated and the public space is activated as a place of artistic creation and thought. Coordenadas y apariciones is a project where the artist poses a circuit of different interventions designed for public spaces and places of transit in the building -corridors, stairs, garden, patio, facade, the shop and library- by way of direct dialogue with the spectator who travels outside the exhibition frame. Each of the installations suggested by the artist for this exhibition has its own trajectory, an evolution and a history that concludes the moment of its installation in the space, as well as the invitation that is made to the spectator to reflect on what happens in the coordinates where they are located, and to question the spaces and moving throughout the Museo. This project thus becomes an opportunity to rethink places, routes and positions, as well as the location of art and its relationship with spectators.
