40º Salão de Arte de Ribeirão Preto Nacional Contemporâneo (SARP)
Read my interview below for the blog of the 40th Riberão Preto Art Salon or click on the link to learn more:
When and how did you begin working with art?
Calligraphy has been directing the way I look at line drawing since 1995. The India ink used in calligraphy is the reason why black appears in many of my works. I got to know artistic calligraphy 10 years later when I was in Italy studying with artists for two years. This encounter made me interested in the expressiveness of the movement. It was in 2008, when I returned to São Paulo and was studying art, that I chose painting as a language. From then on, I have often participated in discussion groups on art and in exhibitions. Drawing has also recently become an everyday language.
Tell us about your formal artistic education
I graduated in Literature/Language Teaching at the University of São Paulo (USP) and studied classical calligraphy when I lived in New York. That´s where I got to know art institutions and had contact with lots of painting. When I was living in Milan, I took courses in a variety of expressions in artistic calligraphy and diversified my working tools to more than just a pen. These were two intense years of living with the local culture and the tensions between the past and present brought to my eyes by the artists I studied with at the Italian Calligraphy Association. In São Paulo, after graduating in art, generous teachers and specialists, like Paulo Pasta, Rodrigo Naves and Marcelo Salles, helped me through their involvement and analysis of issues that were always important for the development of my work. I have been a member of the Pigmento group since 2014 and having this educated eye from my artistic colleagues has also benefitted me.
What issues are currently driving your creativity? Is there any influence you would like to single out?
There are various issues and lots of influences. In terms of current issues, the concept of a place has become a striking presence in my painting. Or should I say that my current painting is driven by expressing my attempt to imbue a place on the canvas. It is in this attempt that the tension exists between the architecture and the place that I am almost trying to make tangible. Everything can happen or change in this place. It is an open space full of possibilities.
Tell us a little about the works entered for the exhibition
The three works chosen are part of my current production, from 2014 and 2015. Therefore, they exemplify the issue of the attempt by my painting to build a place, as mentioned earlier. Each painting contains the coexistence of possibilities that make the space tense; they are the signs of the setting of this place and, at the same time, indicate the very moment when this can change.
Translator John Fitzpatrick