Albuquerque Mendes.GALERIA CANVAS & CO. Albuquerque Mendes came to painting after having been involved with performance since the mid '70s. Combining the vivid, expressive colors of traditional Portuguese folk art folk art, the art works of a culturally homogeneous people produced by artists without formal training. The forms of such works are generally developed into a tradition that is either cut off from or tenuously connected to the contemporary cultural mainstream. with aspects of conceptual artmaking, his work can be seen as a model of resistance to the banal realism that has dominated Portuguese art in recent years. His work engages essential aspects of recent Portuguese culture; at the same time, it is rooted in more general European traditions and the memory of a strong popular and folk culture  This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. - a mix of influences that is perhaps the reason for Mendes' successful reception in Brazil. Among European artists, one can also find affinities to the work of Arnulf Rainer Arnulf Rainer, (born 8 December 1929 in Baden, Austria), is an Austrian painter and is internationally renowned for his abstract informal art. In his early years, Rainer was influenced by the Surrealism. or Hermann Nitsch, whether in Mendes' obsessive thematicization of the Crucifixion, or in the way his work is inscribed in·scribe tr.v. in·scribed, in·scrib·ing, in·scribes 1. a. To write, print, carve, or engrave (words or letters) on or in a surface. b. To mark or engrave (a surface) with words or letters. in a tragic consciousness of his own body as a site of expiation ex·pi·a·tion n. 1. The act of expiating; atonement. 2. A means of expiating. ex . In his recent installation "No Jardim das Oliveiras" (In The Garden of Gethsemane Gethsemane (gĕthsĕm`ənē), olive grove or garden, E of Jerusalem, near the foot of the Mount of Olives. In the Gospels, it is the scene of the agony and betrayal of Jesus. , 1997), Mendes once again presented a self-portrait. But while his previous self-portraits appeared to be linked to the Crucifixion - the artist's own image blurring into that of Christ - here the cross disappeared, to be replaced by a tree. This image evoked the tradition of popular prints, in which human faces appear in trees either as a spectral presence or as the macabre evidence of a hanging. Floating among the leaves like a piece of fruit, Mendes' face was the painting's most compelling motif. Another painting, which was copied from a pre-Renaissance Italian engraving, depicted a white pyramid, a red-brick Tower of Babel Babel (bā`bəl) [Heb.,=confused], in the Bible, place where Noah's descendants (who spoke one language) tried to build a tower reaching up to heaven to make a name for themselves. , and a cross that linked the two. The show also contained a triptych in which - as in a sequence of movie stills - the same Cezanne-esque landscape was shown at dawn, during the day, and at twilight. These mysterious images hung on walls that were painted a strong blue like a night sky, creating a theatrical effect that reinforced the work's abstract dimension. At the same time, each element functioned as an integral part of a drama whose meaning remained obscure. In order to better understand this work it is perhaps necessary to return to earlier traditions, such as the cult of the ex-voto. These roots are perpetuated in Mendes' work much as the breath of Brazilian paganism can be felt in the work of an artist like Helio Oiticica. - Bernardo Pinto de Almeida Translated from the Portuguese by Sheila Glaser. |
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