“French Curve”

The artist uses photography to create works that involve investigations into the landscape, the horizon or architecture. In addition, she creates objects or light boxes that result from formal solutions or speculations. Marcia Xavier participated in the 3rd Mercosul Biennial in Brazil and the 6th Havana Biennial in Cuba. Her work is featured in important public collections such as the Société Générale d'Art Contemporain, in France; the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) and Banco Itaú, both in São Paulo; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Ribeirão Preto; and the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) - Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, in Rio de Janeiro.

At the beginning of her career, during the 1990s, Márcia Xavier investigated photography through self-portraits. During the 2000s, her work expanded into a search for images and questions of distortion and formal presentation, as in "Carambola" (2000), in which snooker balls are reflected and distorted on the walls of an aluminum-lined container. Works such as "Quadra" (2003) or "Curva Francesa" (2005) reflect her interest in questions of scale and urban organization. Her research approaches architecture in works such as "Olho d'água" (2007), an installation that creates spatial distortions from the image reflected by water. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Galeria 111, Lisbon, Portugal (2018), at Casa Triângulo and at the Museo de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), both in São Paulo (2017).

For curator Lizette Lagnado, Xavier’s work presents itself as a “speculative terrain, in which certain photographs remain stored for years until they reach a line that determines their fate (...) It is interesting to note that Marcia Xavier’s interest was fixed on precision games, whose movement depends on a partnership. Although governed by a system of rules and calculations, they involve an “abstract perception of the world”, the indeterminacy of bifurcating moves.”