João
Bodé

With Invisible, João Modé offers us works that operate at the threshold of the worlds of material and immaterial presence emanating from the objects in the collection, and between the times of the musealized objects and the times when they were introduced to the everyday life of the house.

His first action was to choose one of the rooms in the house to inhabit, which he called a Den. He felt the need to experience the foundation not just as a museum, but also as a home. He decided to occupy one of the attics closed to the public and integrate it into the visiting circuit, creating a suspended space where visitors could experience a slower pace more fitting for contemplation. There, Modé surrendered himself to living in the house so he could open up new mental landscapes.

He has created a soundscape, The Time of Sound, playing the records Eva Klabin once listened to. He has created an olfactory landscape by squirting the collector’s favorite perfume (Joy, by Jean Patou) inside the boudoir, turning it into an installation, Joy [in silence]. In the English Room and the Den, Eva Klabin’s favorite flower, the tail flower, is changed daily to replace the blooms that dry and drop off, gathering around the vase and on the floor. To this work/action he has given the name Full [tail flowers].

In the intervention Twilight he sets up an atmosphere that recreates the half-light between day and night, conjuring the subtle perception of the “between” moment, when a thing ceases to be what it is to become something else. This aesthetic option is even more pronounced in Soul [of St. Teresa of Avila], in which he simply moves the position of the baroque sculpture so it stands with its back turned at the top of the stairs, so that to anyone going upstairs the light shining from the lamp will form a luminescent halo around it, revealing its hollow interior.

In this subtle, almost imperceptible action of moving and displacing perception, Modé alters the sensory relationship with the environment and conserves art as an experience capable of preserving the spiritual dimension in man.