Unconditional Inhotim

We all can recognize beauty at the right moment we stand before it. That was the certainty that I had the day I visited the world's largest open-air contemporary art museum. It's a garden that could be called paradise. Inhotim.

Inside the Cosmococa gallery, you lie in bed, rest in the hammock, dive in the pool. The five quasi-cinemas, a concept created by Hélio Oiticica, invade your senses as you invade them. From the terrace of Adriana Varejão gallery, you admire the beautiful water mirror as you dazzle with species of birds from the Amazon region hand-painted on tiles by Beatriz Sauer. And walking through the high vegetation, you find yourself in the mirrors of the work Folly as you discover the gallery of Valeska Soares.

Adriana Varejão Gallery*

Cosmococa Galllery*

Valeska Soares Gallery*

Those are three out more than twenty art galleries present in the garden. The space between each one of them is filled with extraordinary Brazilian nature. The nature that we hear so much throughout our lives, but at thirty two years, I still had no idea of what it really meant. Inhotim is a big garden, not in size only. It is also a giant in meaning and beauty.

Alpha Theater Terrace*

True Rouge Gallery*

No explanation

Years later, I am hanging out with colleagues in a city bar. They're all programmers. Everyone spends the day reading logical conditions. The work of everyone consists of explaining to a machine, through a programming language, what it should do.

In the conversation, my compliments to Inhotim are inevitable. The curiosity of my colleagues comes out, and one of them turns to the mobile phone to do a quick search. He asks me what's the point of suspending a red cube as he shows me the work Red by Tsuruko Yamazaki's on his cell phone. It was uncomfortable for him to see that something didn't necessarily have an answer. That something was not explainable. That something had no logic.

Red by Tsuruko Yamazaki*

Lots of opportunities

My colleague's question represents the perception of lots of people. We live in a society that is excessively dependent on logic. The logic is the base of concrete and highway, fuel and car, and latitude and longitude. Logic is everywhere. Without logic, we lose our coordinates.

So I answered to my colleague that art, before anything else, is always an opportunity. The opportunity, at least for a few moments, to free ourselves from the explanations. To imagine everything that logic advises us against. To not understand or reason. The opportunity not to submit ourselves to any logical conditions. The opportunity to be, like Inhotim, unconditional.