But as soon as our viewing experience reaches out beyond immediate appearances, new disconcerting elements emerge. Any attempt of a hasty interpretation is thrown back to the viewer who will be deprived of the ability to deliver a more precise interpretation. A number of works display a firmly defined form, the repetition of which would seem to be reminiscent of serial markings; others show somewhat disorderly and entwined lines that emerge from, or converge to a common bundle, as if they were the result of freehand drawing.
A further element that gradually reveals itself to be mutual to the pieces is the reference to hands and stretched out fingers. Some more explicit than others, their presence is open to interrogation in the depths of our observation. They distinctly remind us of stone-age drawings and the power of primal self-expression. This imprint of the palm of a hand on stone is reiterated in the markings discovered in Ottjörg’s works, and would correspondingly indicate a testimony of presence. In the southern part of the American continent, ancestral predecessors of these images can be found in the Cueva de las Manos. Made by native indigenous people, they are believed to be at least nine thousand years old. Situated on Argentinian territory, the cave lies in the region of Patagonia, not far from a river interestingly called Pinturas [Paintings]. The reference to such ancient iconography makes us wonder if Ottjörg’s works could indeed result from principles and procedures of printmaking. Our wish to better comprehend the message leads to yet further questions, once more postponing our ability to name what we see.
The moment we grasp that what is happening on the surface of the paper transcends the actual graphic manifestation, the simple observation of appearances is obsolete. It now becomes clear that the materiality, which at first seemed to be limited to the nucleuses, is actually latent to the entirety of the work. What resembled a freehand drawing is in fact a physical material that adheres to the paper and what appeared to be a precise and clearly outlined graphic gesture turns out to have had the physical strength to violently brand the paper to the point of destroying it.
Up until this point, an attempt has been made to disregard, initially at least, the processes, questions, and intentions that drove the artist to create the piece – this, in order to allow a more intuitive reading, with the inherent risk that the range of artistic possibilities is thus reduced to the invocation of personal experience vis-à-vis the artwork.
Here, Ottjörg’s project Deskxistence, started in 2001, must be mentioned. This series of prints attracts the viewer through their richness in traces and vibrating abstract compositions. Yet not one of these images was engraved by the artist, who only appropriated found elements to compose the print. Ottjörg’s printing blocks are in fact school desks that he has collected around the world and used exactly as he found them. In other words, Ottjörg acknowledges the inscriptions and marks by printing the signs and ideas, perspectives and thoughts left on the desks by the pupils who sat behind them: incisions and marks made with pencils, pens, scissors, cutter knifes, and other instruments. Ottjörg initially started working with the appropriation of pre-existing images from the public sphere in 1999 with his project Existentmale, for which the motifs were supplied by scratched metro and bus windows collected from different locations of the globe.
In both these projects, the works display manifestations of the existence of an ancestral past. An analogy can be detected in the ruins of Pompeii in Italy from the times of the Roman Empire, where recuperated inscriptions are considered to be the earliest predecessors of calligraphy and in expansion, of pichações as they are called in Brazil, or graffiti and, more generally, tags that spread across urban centres throughout the world.
Initiated in July 2016 in Brazil’s rural south, Marca Rural could be said to unfold from those previous projects. Ottjörg is a contemporary artist-nomad who works on a global scale, realising his projects across intercontinental trajectories.
Having chosen Porto Alegre as one of his bases, research on imagery and materials ignited an ethnographic interest that reached out to the entire region of Rio Grande do Sul. Leaving the city behind him, he explored its rural outskirts: no longer schools and public transport systems were the subject of his work, but habits and ways of country life became the focus of this project.
In 2004, on the occasion of an artist residency, Ottjörg had already worked in Rio Grande do Sul’s outback. Characteristic of this Brazilian state that shares its borders with Uruguay and Argentina are its agro-pastoral origins and a comparatively late European settlement.
The artist visited the city of Pelotas, in the far south of the region. Marked by economic cycles, the city’s history was written by the production of charque, a strongly salted bovine meat that is typically sun-dried. In the 19th an 20th centuries, farms with large herds of cattle and their own slaughterhouses produced charque on a large scale for both domestic consumption and export. With the development of new storage techniques and improved facilities to preserve raw meat such as industrial and domestic freezers, the production of dried meat has lost significance. Nevertheless, the agricultural customs around the breeding and slaughter of cattle and processing of meat for food continue to be characteristic of the region. Here, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina share the lowland fields of the Pampa through which national boundaries run as mere geopolitically imposed lines.
The use of the printing technique in Marca Rural is a special reference to Rio Grande do Sul and even to Brazilian art history. In the 1950s, Clubes de Gravura [printing clubs], were opened in the cities of Porto Alegre and Bagé. Working in groups, the artists were committed to the depiction of rural life with a focus on social political concerns. The quality of the printing clubs’ artistic production is notorious. Among the diversity of works, one ensemble of woodcuts particularly stands out: Xarqueadas [Checkmarks] (1952–1953), by the Brazilian artist Danúbio Gonçalves (1925, Bagé – 2019, Porto Alegre). This series captures the artisanal production of charque like no other, not even photographic document. The accuracy of the depiction, together with the expressiveness, are remarkable. The prints not only portray the brutality involved in the cattle slaughter but also the hard labour incurred by the production of charque and the difficult living conditions of the agricultural workers. The stance taken in Xarqueadas gives an insight of both regional and global critique. Inspired mostly by Mexican printmakers’ social engagement, Gonçalves distances himself from the mainstream of artistic tradition that glorifies the achievements and romanticizes the trope of the heroic gaúcho, the name traditionally given to the inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul and to the cattle workers of the flats of Southern Brazil and its vast border-crossing region.
On his return to Rio Grande do Sul, Ottjörg researched rural life for a way to access the constitutive elements of gaúcho culture. The rearing of animals for example sustains an interest in ritualistic components known from archaic practices. Re-wrapped in a new meaning, these customs maintain ancestral features that create significance, even in our times.
But in contrast to the above mentioned Clubes de Gravura, Ottjörg’s work is not in line with the socially oriented and figurative print tradition. Firstly, he does not take a documentary approach, much to the contrary. And secondly, his work is not about an expression of regional significance and worth. Marca Rural, the title, is the only locational indication we have, an aspect that is actually not usually found in his work. Coming from a global approach, Ottjörg is moved by questions that drive him to immerse in something of regional impact. This is why this project follows on what he had already laid out in Deskxistence and Existentmale, while at the same it shows significant differences.
There is a long history behind the works composing Marca Rural and this far expanding temporality is contained within them. The artist began the piece by engaging in rural life and accompanying a cattle drive on horseback through the hinterland of southern Brazil and Argentina – a custom that has been preserved in gaúcho culture. Not only did he thereby have the chance to experience a culture and region that he was not familiar with, but he witnessed archaic practices which have survived to this day on the fazendas [farms] far away from the cities. It was while managing herds of cattle and horses that the artist learnt about the practices of branding and castrating male animals.
In this ethnographic venture, Ottjörg was deeply affected by the disturbing cruelty and the rituals he observed in the relationship between man and animal. There, he witnessed explicit gestures of supremacy, metaphorically echoing crucial questions of our times. Cattle and horses are thrown to the ground in order to be marked with a branding iron. Then, they have to endure the castration procedure, where the herdsmen cut open the scrotum armed with their bare hands and a pocket knife to sever the testicles.
The removal of the testicles, known as castração a canivete [castration by pocket knife], is aimed at breaking the animals and the control of reproduction. According to the conviction of rural people, castration eliminates sexual excitability, which makes the animals more docile and submissive because, unlike those capable of reproduction, they no longer engage in territorial fights. In addition, cattle are said to put on more fat after castration, which makes their meat juicier; so, it also has something directly to do with the money market.
Ottjörg understands these practices still carried out in the rural south of Brazil as an access path to elements deeply rooted inside a culture. And this from the point of view of an outsider that shows how the artist’s alterity can enable him to progressively understand the codes he is confronted with.
Ottjörg begins his projects with documentary photographs and film to back his research; this material records the background and process in preparation of the piece. “Documentation helps me to understand a place and to find my position in it”, he says. At this point already, there is a participatory and communal aspect pointing to a rejection of individual authorship. As an eyewitness to the branding and castration of the herds, the artist becomes part of the ritual. What begins with the work on the animals almost always ends with an exuberant Churrasco feast. Ottjörg makes his own recordings but also hands his camera on to the people around him, thus broadening the documentary perspectives.
Passing through different stages, he experiments with alternatives and processual approaches through his basic matrix: the language of printmaking. Immediately after the branding of the animals, Ottjörg asks the gauchos to leave a brand on a sheet of paper (clear-cut graphic sign, serial marking). When the branding iron does not burn a hole right through the paper, it leaves traces of the animal hide as an imprint. After the castration, he will ask the castrator for the impression of his bloodstained hand and of the knife used to cut off the testicles (the stains, drops, hands, the spread fingers). The method is in itself a kind of choreography in the course of which the artist involves other people in his work and is merely there to give instructions.
On his return to the city, a second phase of Marca Rural develops. In the Museu do Trabalho in Porto Alegre, the printing presses are used to transport further impressions on paper. Working with the same sheets, on which he had previously appropriated the prints and gestures of the herders, Ottjörg now follows two different paths. Firstly, he distributes small pieces of testicle flesh collected from the witnessed castrations on the paper. Under the pressure of the printing press, this produces an unpredictable image (resembling exploding nucleuses). A comparable method is applied to the second series of works, for which sheared horse hair from the animals’ manes is added (lines). Once again, the process is what conditions the resulting image. In Ottjörg’s work, the printed materiality extends to an expression of artistic reflection and conceptual thought. The combination of organic and artistic substances is found in multiple variations along the course of art history. In Rio Grande do Sul, this was remarkably practiced by Karin Lambrecht (*1957, Porto Alegre). The gaúcha artist, whose work stands in dialogue with Marca Rural, used animal blood in her works. Her approach is however quite different: Lambrecht comes from painting, whereas Ottjörg explores the expressive potentials of printing.
Technically speaking, Ottjörg’s work is positioned within an expanded concept of printmaking. Not only does he use unconventional materials (testicles, blood, horse hair) but he does not draw himself. His compositions articulate the landworker’s movements and imagery collected on sheets of paper, much like Dada methods of collage and montage. Finally, chance, probability, and surprise take a considerable influence on the images since it is the printing press that ultimately determines the final result.
As can be seen, a broad temporality runs through the Marca Rural project. This is emphasized both by the artist’s process and by the visual and material indicators contained in the works as well as in aspects generated from the investigation of archaic practices and rites. On this level, the works take a strong political stance. The provocative questions start with the domination and castration of animals by human beings and ultimately lead to a reflection on the most pressing themes of violence, domination, and power as such. The castration of animals is a potent image to re-think the macho and patriarchal character that persists in contemporary society. It also addresses prevailing forms of appropriation. Blood, we know, points to the finitude of both life and death. And how can one not think of the printing cylinder in metaphorical terms such as repression and oppression?
Thus, Marca Rural presents itself as a critically reflective work, which, however, does not impose itself as such, nor does it compromise on aesthetic formulations. The questions it raises, unlike the tradition of socially and politically engaged graphics mentioned above, are neither explicit nor figurative, but feature in the work as concept and process, trace and manifestation. The commentary, if any can be objectively discerned, relates to the vast cultural system in which we all live.
Similarly, the piece does not romanticise a surviving tradition or promote the idea that rural people are more authentic and truthful because of their affinity to past customs and traditions. On the contrary, the artist rejects any folklorisation of culture. And his outside gaze certainly contributes to this critical perspective.
In Ottjörg's view, his work should be explained neither through the process of creation nor the questions it triggers, hence the effort to initially avoid providing any information concerning the preliminaries and components of the work in favour of the experience of direct contact. If we consider his projects as a whole, we will note that it is not the artist’s concern to provide directive indications that would in any way shape the viewers’ interpretation.
His intention is that we first allow ourselves to be guided by the aesthetics of his work, in order to formulate an understanding by our own means that are specific to each one of us. The visuals of the work are then completed by the concept. His artistic practice does not aim at totally eliminating the reception of the contents and idea, but only at delaying their moment of impact. This may be a utopia in a world that attempts to define everything on the fast track. This is precisely why Ottjörg makes a breach in the contemporary scene by putting a halt on the all-time assault of the flood of shimmering images with pre-fabricated messages.
Ottjörg does not put interpretation before his works, nor does he tell us what to think. By prioritizing the artistic experience over prefixed meaning ascription, his artworks develop a significant force of their own. They thus evade the trap of deceptive oversimplification and do not provide a platform to the sermons of political correctness that invade our present times.
Francisco Dalcol holds a PhD in art theory, criticism, and history from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Since 2019, director of the Rio Grande do Sul Art Museum MARGS in Porto Alegre, Brazil.