Roberto Pontual wrote this text for the catalogue to the show of work by Marcos Coelho Benjamim held in the context of the XX São Paulo Biennial (October 14 to December 10, 1989). According to the critic, the materials and objects in the works on exhibit are “gesticulating beings with souls.” The artist steeps in aesthetic power works made from basic things like furniture, architectural details, and commonplace objects. Pontual provides an overview of Coelho Benjamim’s artistic background and career, from his “jocose” drawings from the seventies to his more recent sculptures in wood and metal. The critic considers some of these works “shields” in that, though “appealing,” they are rough like “graters or hedgehogs.”  

The series of works that Marcos Coelho Benjamim showed at the XX São Paulo Biennial (1989) made use of waste materials (scrap iron and wood). Because of perforations at regular or irregular intervals on the metal sculptures’ surfaces, art critic Pontual compares them to graters of the sort used for cooking. This “shabby” appearance evokes, in Pontual’s view, a certain mythical and bitter—if attractive—quality; they must be interpreted as “a bridge between reality and dream.” A native of Recife (state of Pernambuco), Roberto Pontual worked as a journalist and literary and art critic in Rio de Janeiro. In 1969, he published the Dicionário de Artes Plásticas, a point of reference in Brazilian art. Active in the Brazilian art milieu starting in the sixties, he was a crucial critic in Rio de Janeiro in the seventies; he was the director of exhibitions at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM-RJ) in Rio from 1973 to 1976. In 1978, he organized the show Geometria sensível at the MAM-RJ, for which he earned still more notoriety. He chose to leave Brazil for political reasons in 1980—during the tense period of the military dictatorship—settling in Paris, where he resided until his death in 1992. In Roberto Pontual’s text Explode Geração (Rio de Janeiro: Avenir, 1984) [see it in the ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1110991)], the author attempts to articulate his personal, at times literary, perspective on Brazilian art of the eighties, specifically in relation to artists like Mônica Nador and Ana Maria Tavares in São Paulo, and Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo and Beatriz Milhazes in Rio. See as well the manifesto he wrote on that generation in “Semana nacional de poesia de vanguarda: comunicado e conclusões” (doc. no. 1110501), and Ricardo Basbaum’s “Pintura dos anos 80: algumas observações críticas” (doc. no. 1110972). [See also in the archive the following texts by Roberto Pontual: “Crise da crise? A resposta também pode ser nossa” (doc. no. 1110986), “Do mundo, a América Latina. Entre as geometrias, a sensível” (doc. no. 771399), “Os dois Brasis” (doc. no. 1110617), “Em torno do sistema da arte” (doc. no. 1110554), “Expor: impor ou propor?” (doc. no. 1110954), “Imagens da imagem” (doc. no. 1110688), “A natureza reposta em arte” (doc. no. 1111359), “Notas sôbre a xilogravura popular brasileira” (doc. no. 1111031), “Um panorama brasileiro” (doc. no. 1110604), “O quase mago Roberto Magalhães” (doc. no. 1111080), “Sistema de arte em questão: o que fazer?” (doc. no. 1111082), and “Waltércio Caldas: luz e enigma” (doc. no. 1110563)].