Celma Albuquerque Galeria de Arte presents, from May 25th, an individual exhibition of the artist Paulo Whitaker.
Since 1984, the São Paulo artist has participated in important exhibitions on the national and international scene. We can mention, amongst them, the 20th and 25th São Paulo Biennials in 1989 and 2002 respectively. In this period, his distinctive lines appear, along with colored masses with irregular contours, curvilinear and geometric shapes on a monochromatic background. From then on, these shapes start to group and juxtapose, and geometric figures are added to the composition.
“I recently watched David Lynch’s new series, Twin Peaks, with the same pleasure as I watched Cremaster by Matthew Barney many years ago. It was all about sitting, playing the show and being carried away by something that I do not fully understand, but can still enjoy the images, the strangeness, the characters, the situations created, the dialogues, the scenarios and props, the way how the camera moves, and how the story is presented to someone (myself, in this case). Of course, Cremaster and Twin Peaks have no common intentions. But there is this “hyper creative” way and suggestions of atmospheres and mental states. And a distant storyline stitched in the background. As in the songs of the band Sonic Youth. They are not understood easily, but then you find the thread, only to lose it again.
Like so, I have been searching in my works for images that leave me in a state of suspension, discomfort and some plenitude. Whether temporary or permanent, time will tell me. In the last 30 years my work in painting has gone through different moments, always the result of my certainties, doubts, concerns and experiences. Chance was my friend, destructive impulses too.
The first works I did that I like to remember are from 1989. Since then, I see that conceptual and aesthetic questions have always been based on a backbone: the Figure and the Background, the lowering of narrative and literary possibilities, the construction of a pictorial vocabulary without aggregated meanings, the use, sometimes restrained and sometimes torn, of color, the forms that unfold, the ways of structuring the compositions, all in an attempt to reach a result that only painting can make me reach.”