Cravo Neto’s photo equipment was stolen from his car. He went to the police and the thief was caught – but before he was arrested he burnt the cameras, lenses and filters. Everything was destroyed, carbonized. The artist placed the charred objects over the same canvas he used in his infinity cove; the worn-out canvas was removed from its normal use to become part of the installation’s composition. Here, fire returns both as a sign and a signal, as something that burns and is transformed. Curator Walter Zanini wrote about this work in the catalog of the 1983 Bienal de São Paulo. He saw in this installation the point of convergence between photography and sculpture, where “the primary sculptural idea becomes a creator of atmosphere – evocative and dramatic in the poetic mystery of the realities contained in it.” The work was shown for the first time in 1982, in an exhibition held at an abandoned industrial warehouse. At the time, Cravo Neto produced a series of installations using the destroyed remnants and mixing them with his canvases – the exhibition as a whole can be seen as a single installation.
—L.C.O.