The Brasil exhibition was an attempt to engage intensively with a seemingly distant culture - a test case for the attitude towards so-called international art, which could mean more than transporting set pieces and exotic ambitions. Three artists from Rio de Janeiro with three very different artistic positions were invited.

Ricardo Basbaum's work clarified communication strategies through the use of texts, imagination and objects.

Eduardo Coimbra may well have been the artist in the series who would have most likely fitted into a Brazilian cliché. Materials that are often used in black magic in Brazil, such as chicken legs, eggs, earth or grains, were part of his objects and room installations.

Helmut Batista presented his project You do not need to pay, but you have to consume it. Frequent visitors to the gallery had been familiar with his work since the exhibition Copygrammes. Furnished with counterfeited stamps, he sent out ominous mailings from all over the world at two-month intervals for four years to people interested in art and to certain groups of people, depending on the project. The printed works and small objects in the envelopes related to social grievances in the sender's country (including Turkey, Canada, China, Brazil, Egypt, Slovenia, the USA, and India), mostly critically and often provocatively.

Text: Andrea Hörl