Ricardo Basbaum (1961) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Artist, writer, and professor, Basbaum investigates art as an intermediary device and platform for articulating sensory experience, sociability, and language. Since the late 1980s, he has developed a specific vocabulary for his work, applying it uniquely to each project. These manifest as drawings, installations, videos, and urban interventions.

He has recently participated in major group exhibitions at Documenta XII, Kassel; Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Chicago; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; and São Paulo Biennial. He was also artist-in-residence at Audain Gallery in Vancouver and has held solo projects at Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, and The Showroom, London. His work is in collections such as Tate Modern, London; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP; and Museu de Arte Moderna of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Acordes#1 (sub hidro infra entre) (2024) presents four chords distributed around the phrase “sub hidro infra entre.” The invitation is for the image to be freely vocalized, accompanied by a six-string instrument. The work is part of a series of 24 chords, each registered alongside variations of the phrase in permutation.

In an excerpt from the book Acordes by Ricardo Basbaum, produced for the exhibition Ah! Oh! at Le 19 CRAC Montbéliard (2025), it is explained: “The chords were freely created from widely used schemes in the transcription and sharing of musical compositions for string instruments, taking as reference the notion of chord charts for solo or accompaniment. (…) There is one line of text per page, to be vocalized according to the performers’ decisions: the words are also inscribed in the compositional proposal, with open vocalizations intersecting the chords in interlaced, parallel, or simultaneous ways, as continuous or fragmented text emissions, in their permutational variability.”