Beschreibung:

BRAZILIAN Cildo Meireles Inserções em circuitos ideológicos 1970 transfer text on three Coca-Cola glass bottles each: 9 7/8 x 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (25.1 x 5.7 x 5.7 cm) Each printed "CM 5-70" center right. This work is from an unnumbered edition.
Provenance Gift of the artist to the present owner Exhibited New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Information, 1970 (another example exhibited) London, Tate Modern, Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970, June 1- September 18, 2005 (another example exhibited) Zurich, Daros-Latinamerica Collection at Daros Exhibitions, Seduções: Valeska Soares Cildo Meireles Ernesto Neto June 9- October 15, 2006 (another example exhibited) London, Tate Modern; Barcelona, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Fine Arts; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Cildo Meireles October 14, 2008 – June 27, 2010. Traveling exhibition.(another example exhibited) Literature K. McShine, Information, exh. cat., New York, 1970 (another example illustrated) D. Cameron P. Herkenhoff, and G. Mosquera, Cildo Meireles London, 1999, pp.108-109, 111 (another example illustrated) Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970, exh. cat., London, 2005, p.138 (another example illustrated) H-M. Herzog, Seduções: Valeska Soares Cildo Meireles Ernesto Neto Zurich, 2006 pp. 92, 105 (another example illustrated) G. Brett, ed., Cildo Meireles exh. cat., London, 2008, pp. 62-63, 65 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay “Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds is another work at the (unconscious) source of the Insertions. It is an example of an object that exists precisely at this borderline between fiction and reality—it belongs to those two worlds simultaneously. I consider readymades and the War of the Worlds to be two or three of the greatest art objects of the twentieth century.” Cildo Meireles quoted in: G. Brett, ed., Cildo Meireles London, 2008, p. 65 Cildo Meireles is internationally recognized as one of the most influential Latin American artists of the 20th century. His body of work is comprised of such a wide array of media that it is impossible to classify him within a single style or movement. Having emerged as an artist in the 1960s, his artistic practice is often described as an example of a politicized version of conceptualism, although that label does not accurately encapsulate the nuances of his observations. As the artist stated, “In some way you become political when you don’t have a chance to be poetic. I think human beings would much prefer to be poetic.” Much of Meireles’ work deals with the intricacies of social interactions and how they are affected by structures of power, which can be of a political, social, cultural, or physical nature. The present lot is one of his most celebrated works, and it embodies the artist’s insurmountable ability to expose unsuspecting socio-political mechanisms through art. This lot is part of a large scale art project titled Insertions into Ideological Circuits. Meireles began to execute it in 1970, during a period of intense political oppression in Brazil. He found a way to circumvent the government censors by printing political messages of protest on glass Coca-Cola bottles, which were then returned into circulation. Meireles was channeling the idea of the castaway’s message in a bottle, which is thrown in the ocean in hopes of eventual communication. Meireles replaced the ocean with the Brazilian public and the means of commercial production that daily life inevitably centers around. Almost invisible when empty, the messages printed on transfer text became more legible when the bottles were refilled at the factory. Few people noticed the alterations on the bottles until they began to drink. While using an existing commercial mode of distribution, Meireles destabilized the ideology behind it. Coca-Cola represented the invasion of American brands into the Brazilian mindset, and Meireles employed the company’s own methods to denounce what he believed to be cultural and economic imperialism. Insertions into Ideological Circuits is an important example of the development of conceptual art in Latin America. Meireles credits Marcel Duchamp as a major inf