Two parallel walls erected in front of the entrance to the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Contemporary Art invite us into a narrow passageway. And an unusual one at that. Each wall is constructed from hundreds of toy cars, stacked vertically in shades of red, blue, green, yellow, gray, orange, and brown. Titled “Chaos,” the installation—comprising this pair of walls—evokes a claustrophobic sensation, even as the plastic miniatures lend a playful touch to the space.
Both entertaining and unsettling, the passage through this walled structure along the wide, beautiful avenues at the museum’s entrance contrasts with the suffocating scenery on the street side. The noise and constant traffic on the two-way avenue and the overpasses ahead—cutting through the city—reverberate off the walls of toy cars and bounce back toward us. They inevitably create a sense of strangeness.
Eduardo Srur is an artist with a career filled with important and provocative experiences, who consistently reminds us of the neglect of the environment, the pollution that urban life causes in rivers, the accumulated trash, and the burden left by waste. It’s interesting to consider how he does this.
To complete the work, the public will be invited to activate it. Literally, the walls will come crashing down, and at the end of the installation, in December, what will remain is a huge horizontal rug made from the toy cars that covered the walls. There will be enough toys to create a miniature parking lot. And everything will be donated.
text by Katia Canton, curator at MAC USP
4,000 plastic trolleys and scaffolding
6 x 4 x 3 m
