The visit of Max Bill – Pedregulho, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
180 x 240 cm
I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the world’s biggest cities, which carries many cultural contradictions and a social context historically defined in the relations of colonialism. The term post/colonial refers to a vast number of changes that have affected my country, in particular the blends of identities, languages, and influences that have resulted in complex systems of dependency and independence. Its visual culture aspect interests me the most. Trough my artistic practice I investigate these processes in deep and translate paradigms of modern society into art works.
Thinking about modernity in Brazil implies revising the works of certain artists who have been protagonists of episodes of rupture in the local as well as in the international cultural arena. Starting from the work of Max Bill, as one of the main influences of the transition period from Figurativism to Abstractionism in the early 1950s, my work proposes a review on the impact of the theoretical problems of Concretism developed in the Bauhaus and later in the Hochschule fur Gestaltung Ulm, on Brazilian context. It aims to discuss the mystification of the European avant-garde and the copy of this model as a post/colonial effect on Brazilian visual arts.
The paintings embody the distinct languages of figuration and abstraction. The vegetation negotiates the canvas with geometric patterns that quotes Max Bill’s paintings. These works, with its colorful pallet raise the discussion on tropical exoticism and at the same time the historical role of painting in these dialogs.