From São Paulo to Brussels, the Mendes Wood DM gallery is reshuffling the cards of contemporary art
Numéro art: What values and what vision of the profession of gallery owner did you defend when you opened your first space ten years ago?Felipe Dmab: We opened the gallery in 2010 because too many fantastic Brazilian artists were not represented. Artists like Paulo Nazareth or Lucas Arruda, who work on extremely political issues but in a very conceptual way. In Brazil, these artists were scary. They now enjoy international recognition. Sonia Gomes was in the same position. Five years later, she was the first black Brazilian artist exhibited at the Venice Biennale. And we also understood that Sao Paulo had the potential to create a dialogue with the whole world, which was not yet the case at the time. We wanted to show these Brazilian artists rejected by the system and from all over Brazil, in the rest of the country and abroad as well. And we wanted foreign artists to be able to discover our country. We also initiated a residency program long before opening the gallery. We welcomed artists from Asia, Iceland or France like Neïl Beloufa.
Matthew Wood: We are storytellers. This is our social mission. Being a gallery owner consists in putting above all the relations with the artists, their visions... and in carrying this message to the whole world. It is an evangelical mission, in the original sense of the term. Sometimes art bothers you. You don't like the message. And that's what makes it interesting. You must still spread the message because it is precisely because this message bothers you that this art is powerful and relevant.
Pedro Mendes: The role of an artist is to transform the way we see the world, and the role of the gallery owner is to be constantly translating this idea and offering it the greatest visibility.
FD: The role of art is to transport us to other dimensions, outside of ourselves, and to help us understand and reveal the world around us. It changes who we are and how we behave. Art can also sometimes open new doors within ourselves. Artists are there to allow us to access things that we could not reach or distinguish within ourselves. This is the magic of the artistic experience.
