La Bête

For this interactive and participatory solo, Wagner Schwartz is reactivating the famous figure of the Bicho (or “Beast”), the adjustable metal sculpture which the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark produced as a series in the early 1960s. The performer begins by manipulating a plastic replica of the original object, and playing with its system of hinges, before inviting the audience to do likewise, this time with a different kind of beast: his own naked body. Over and above a homage to this visual artist and the addition of  Neo-Concretism to the history of body art, The Beast brings about a shift between two types of plasticity (in art / life) so as to examine the intimacy of this reified body, which thus becomes as instrumental as one of Clark’s Bichos. In this performance, Wagner Schwartz extends his reflection on the relationship with the Other, and the Outsider, by organising a resolutely head-on encounter  with the public, under the sign of tactility.