The fifth issue of the journal Nervo Óptico presents photographic work by Telmo Lanes (with neither title nor text). The image of an eye is shown in three sets of five photographs laid out in a circular composition. The artist’s own eye follows the path of a glance from left to right and from upward to downward. In the center of the composition are two white drawings, one a circle and one a line, each on its own black background, as well as the artist’s initials (T. L.). The photographs were taken by another artist in the N.O. group, Clovis Dariano, whose photo credit appears in the right-hand margin.

Undoubtedly, this fifth issue of the journal offers the most radical visual content among the approaches shown in Nervo Óptico. Here the artist Telmo Lanes (b. 1955) presents an analysis of the artist’s gaze and its field of action. This gaze, which looks back at anyone who is looking at it (the viewer), even tries to take a good look all around itself. Another new paradigm slips into this work: rather than being executed by the artist who created it, it was executed by the artist who photographed it. The aim of Lanes’s work is pure concept. His focus on the act of looking reverberates in the fields of painting, design and film directing, all at once.

Under the epigraph “Publication open to the dissemination of new visual poetics,” Nervo Óptico was published monthly in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul) for a total of 13 issues (from April 1977 to September 1978). The journal was created by a group of artists who identified themselves with the journal’s initials, N.O. The participants in Nervo Óptico included Vera Chaves Barcellos (b. 1938), Carlos Asp (b. 1949), Carlos Pasquetti (b. 1948), Clovis Dariano (b. 1950), Jesús Escobar (b. 1956), Flávio Pons (b. 1947), Mara Alvares (b. 1948), Romanita Martins (b. 1940) and Telmo Lanes (b. 1955).

The publication was created in the form of a small plaque, printed on only one side of the sheet (32 cm x 22.05cm), with an average run of 2,000 copies. Circulated nationally and internationally, Nervo Óptico was sent out to a broad mailing of artists, journalists and art critics.

The content of Nervo Óptico was basically visual, reproducing works by the group or invited artists, almost all including the language of photography, whether as artwork in itself or as photographic documentation of performances. The publication created a space for debate about contemporary art events far from the values that prevailed in the art market and the demand for collectible objects. Nervo Óptico focused on conceptual art, thus creating its own instrument of legitimation.

All 13 issues of the Porto Alegre publication Nervo Óptico are available in the ICAA digital archive.

For a description of the works in the group’s first exhibition and other artists’ testimony on the semiotic intentions of its work, see “[Em manifestaçao realizada em dezembro último...]” by the Grupo N.O. [doc. no. 1110913]. In addition, regarding the group’s thinking about the artist’s role and creative potential beyond market conditions, see the document distributed during the exhibition entitled “Manifesto” [doc. no. 1110690]. The second issue of this Rio Grande do Sul journal presented work by Mara Álvares [doc. no. 1110914]; the third issue, work by Carlos Asp [doc. no. 1110915]; and the fourth showed work by Carlos Pasquetti [doc. no. 1110916].