About Us
Calmon-Stock Collection, 2000 / 2024
The Calmon-Stock collection, based in the city of Rio de Janeiro, is a collection of contemporary Brazilian art which gathers more than 150 artists and around 400 works covering paintings, sculptures, photographs, objects, video art and installations. Started in 2000 by collectors Roberto Calmon and André Stock, the collection covers the three first decades of the 21st century, maintaining as its guiding thread the unconditional attention to young contemporary artists, new galleries and political collectives. The collection, although of a private nature, is open to the institutions, having collaborated by lending to exhibitions at Banco do Brasil Cultural Centre, Caixa Cultural Rio de Janeiro, Museum of the Portuguese Language, MAM Rio, Maria Antônia Cultural Centre, Ecarta Foundation, ArtRio among others.
In 2017, curated by Rio de Janeiro artists Omar Salomão and Fernando de La Rocque, the book “Bodies, Letters and Some Animals” was launched, which presented the history and an excerpt of the collectors’ choices. The fundamental objective was to make the artists in the collection visible at a time in the country when various democratic foundations, such as the Ministry of Culture – abolished during this period – and the freedom of artistic production were heavily patrolled. An edition of 500 copies, with the collaboration of Brazilian and foreign intellectuals such as Marcelo Backes, Nina Saroldi, Evangelina Seiler, Alexandre Ribenboim, Daniele Dal Col, Olav Velthuis, Markus Gabriel, Christoph Türcke and Diederich Diederichsen was distributed to artists, museums and galleries Brazil, but also in Germany, England, Spain, Holland, Canada, Chile and Argentina, with an extraordinary reception. Its online version was made available jointly.
In the book, curator Evangelina Seiler wrote: “the Calmon-Stock Collection is more than a collection, one could say that it is a residential curation based on the association of familiar objects and chosen works. Curious, thought-provoking and particular, the Calmon-Stock Collection shows two collectors who choose their works independently of external interests. The coherence of the set is established by the collectors and only by them.” This is true, but, adding a theoretical point of view to the issue of coherence, it is mainly Kantian aesthetics that appears to us as a beacon in our discussions and choices in the act of always rethinking the issue of the autonomy of aesthetic judgment beyond strict spheres of art and the supposed autonomy of beauty. We understand Kantian aesthetics and its contemporary interpretations as a theoretical key to thinking about the collection because it brings together the questions that interest us: art, beauty, work, politics, ethics, the possible meanings of the world and, more precisely, the political idea of art as creating new common meanings for the community.
In a country with a long colonial history like Brazil, it is essential to intertwine aesthetic and political issues. Our main criteria for selecting and acquiring works has always been to direct special attention to very young artists from a political perspective of fighting against the hegemony of already institutionalized cultural production. This hegemony prevents part of the creation and production of art from participating in narrative disputes and the sensitive sharing. Such criteria, we believe, enable the flourishing of a true multiplicity of world views, which is good for democracy. In this aspect, the treasure of our African and Indigenous aesthetic influences and of all our multicultural ancestries are like a path to a country that is green, yellow, blue, but also brown, black, red, turquoise, lilac, gold, olive, pink -pink…
If there is, then, a mission or vision for a private collection, it would be to look at the journey of artists, arts and works with their different ways of living, seeing and expressing the world. In this aspect – aware that we are aware of the very high criteria of art, art criticism and its history – we perceive a horizontality in our way of seeing it. Living with so many works, consecrated or not, and with so many different stories, is not only a privilege, but also a commitment to diversity and the promotion of equality. As collectors, who also move into other areas of knowledge, this seems to be a natural path for us. On this new website – which covers almost the entire collection – we share with pleasure and great joy a common path.
