Galeria Marcelo Guarnieri is pleased to present, between 14 May and 25 June 2022, “Hipocampo”, Monday exhibition individual by Silvia Velludo at our address in São Paulo. In addition to the series paintings “Hipocampo”, carried out between 2016 and 2022, the show brings together some of the works produced by the artist during the 1990s 2000, like the paintings in the series “gloom” (2003-2004), “Foreign exchange” (2007-2012), the object book in digital sign “Ida” (2012) and video installation “Aurora Project” (2002). The exhibition has a text signed by Fernando Cocchiarale.
formed by more than 300 paintings, the series “Hipocampo” continues Velludo's investigation of the production and reproduction of images through painting. The artist makes use of an extensive collection of cell phone photographs, of newspaper news, movie scenes and social media posts to reflect on the apparent banality of these images and the fast pace at which they are disseminated, translating the codes from digital photographic language to pictorial language. The title refers to the brain structure responsible for memory storage and alludes to the involuntary record we make of the images that surround us and the infinite unconscious associations that can be established between them.. The set of paintings of varying sizes is distributed along the entire length of the gallery walls., forming a large diagrammatic panel of portraits of everyday life, sometimes interspersed with canvases covered with metallic pigments, ora with steel reflective plates, bronze, copper and brass that, by mirroring the viewer's image, interrupt the flow of “scrolling” visual and serve as breathing zones.
“The panoramic view of so many flowing images connects us directly to the digital browsing experience on mobile screens and social networks., profusion that comes to us daily producing discontinuous stories and narrative breaks. The dynamics of digital images no longer allow us to know the origin and history of each moment., place or meeting, in their respective times and places, in the face of accelerated production, dissemination and consumption of information over networks. The panorama of scenes by Silvia Velludo proposes a reflection on the saturation of images in digital media and the search for permanence and meaning that an artistic work ideally seeks in its essence.”, observes the critic Fernando Cocchiarale.
The rerun of the series “gloom” (2003-2004) and “Foreign exchange” (2007-2012) provides the public with a re-encounter with the origins of Silvia Velludo's research on the formation of the image through painting. Over the decade of 2000, the artist was less interested in the image as a figurative representation than in its constitution as a physical phenomenon. In “gloom” the artist works on the dispersion of light through the collision between small points of color, forming, on each screen, reticulated structures that can refer to the grainy image of tube televisions. If in this series Velludo explores optical effects through the use of acrylic paint and the different combinations and shades possible to be achieved by the material, in “Foreign exchange” she chooses to work with the inherent properties of glass beads. The sparkling character of colored glass is intensified in these paintings by the grouping of a large number of small spheres glued to a surface of 4m²., giving the eyes the impression that there is a disintegration of color in thousands of points of light.
Prior to this investigation developed by Silvia Velludo through painting on the formation of the image as an optical phenomenon, is your production of video installations. Videoprojection emerged for the artist as a language that allowed her to work with the materiality of light itself., exploring color variation, shapes and words from moving image resources. “Aurora Project” (2002) consists of a sequence of colors projected onto a square surface formed by about 30 kg of coarse salt. Similar to Velludo's interest in the incidence of light on vitreous matter is his interest in the incidence of light on the crystalline structure of salt and its high reflective capacity.. The projected colors refer to the colors produced by the Polar Auroras, physical-chemical phenomena that result from interactions between the Earth's magnetic field and solar plasma and that can be observed by the emission of colored lights that move across the sky.
“Ida” (2012) is an object-book in digital sign format that brings together several writings produced by the artist over twelve years from what happened around her
– in public spaces, private or even on television. The work was presented for the first time at the exhibition “There is more than one poem in each frame” in 2012, where the artist occupied all the walls of the gallery with hundreds of enlarged details of photographs taken over ten years in a similar operation., over-recording images of your surroundings. in “Ida” the artist chooses the word as a tool to account for this record and in “There is more than one poem in each frame” she chooses digital photography, in “Hipocampo” Velludo performs a procedure already started in his previous exhibition “Self-portrait with Iphone 5C”, translating the photographic record into the language of painting. The notion of speed is an issue that runs through all these works, both in the clash between the agile rhythm of an observational writing based on free association and the reading regulated by the slowness of the sign, as in the clash between the speed of capturing the photograph and the lengthy nature of a figurative painting.
SERVICE
Galeria Marcelo Guarnieri
Exhibition: Silvia Velludo: Hipocampo
Exposure period: 14 May 2021 to 25 June 20212
Free entrance
Alameda Lorena, 1835 - Gardens
São Paulo – SP – Brasil / 01424 002
tel +55 (11) 3063 5410 / | contato@galeriamarceloguarnieri.com.br
themselves - sex: 10h to 19hs.
Saturday – 10h to 17hs
More info, access the page www.galeriamarceloguarnieri.com.br
Press Office
Hussein Rimi - fone (11) – 988931454 Hussein_rimi@hotmail.com
Fernando Cocchiarale
March 2022
The growing presence of digital media in our era has defined new practices and questions for artists who use images as a means of poetic creation.. As a critical counterpoint to the functional and pragmatic nature of the image economy, many artists have sought different ways of reflecting on contemporary technological society. Although the artisanal origin of the image was gradually replaced by technical means such as photography, with the expressiveness of the hand giving way to the objectivity of the lenses and the speed and accessibility of the cameras, the manual reproduction of images of photographic or digital origin in painting is an operation that broadly investigates and reassesss the evolutionary process of technical and technological means and their possible rearticulations..
The collection of paintings that Silvia Velludo presents in this exhibition originates from the collection of numerous internet image files and digital cell phone photos that the artist selects and reproduces in her works as a visual repertoire for her poetic work..
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Silvia uses digital media as a notebook in which people, places and moments to be remembered are saved in image and later worked in ink on canvas. His paintings depict scenes and events that mirror an imagery panorama typical of the universe of digital culture and the dynamics of social networks in their profusion of themes., clippings and records, standing between the memorable and the ordinary, the admirable and the banal, the unusual and the commonplace.
The paintings from digital image files date back to the last solo exhibition held by Silvia, Self-portrait with iPhone 5c, in 2016, when he returned to devote himself to observation painting.
The multiple scenes of her current work are the result of Silvia Velludo's constant travel seasons between her hometown, Ribeirão Preto, and São Paulo, where you also live and work, and other locations where, accompanied by brushes, portable inks and screens, the artist registers her paintings directly in each place of stay, justifying the diminutive scale of his works.
The 295 paintings made by Silvia Velludo over successive seasons of travel are arranged on all the walls of the space in order to compose an extensive network of visual fields in irregular fractions.. With the appearance of a discontinuous diagram, your scenes visually slide in horizontal series, verticals and diagonals that, also in heels, refer to other scenes by proximity, resemblance or opposition, a flow of images that form sequential narratives, crossed or random in direct association with spectator observation.
Silvia articulates different levels of meaning for her images. Among the assorted shapes and colors of hundreds of tiny canvases of neat figurative painting, an attentive visitor will notice the presence of portraits and looks that seem to dialogue in silence with the observer., forming a parallel narrative; in another moment, frugal scenes of children and pets are imposed by the affective force, domestic and family that evoke, even if it is the anonymous and distant intimacy of internet images. Scenes of fish swimming in circles appear to be in action, as if the painting kept the memory of the movement and captured the spectator's attention. dolls, toys and works of art alternate between landscapes, fruit trees and obscure characters from social networks and the news in search of a plausible contextualization and intelligible meanings.
The paintings gathered here by Silvia Velludo acquire meaning through the notion of ensemble that every collection establishes.. The different situations painted on canvas are interposed as spatial fields and figurative planes., open condition that allows countless narrative combinations by juxtaposition, displacement and free association. The visual tour that this pictorial device proposes reconstitutes a filmic temporal dimension of the image, both by the suggestion of continuous movement of the painted scenes – fish in circles, eyes in orbit -, as by the action of the gaze itself that runs through the surfaces of the paintings in search of new stimuli and meanings.
These paintings seem to propose, several times, a guessing game around the identification of the scenes chosen by the artist. As in a dare or charade, we try to recognize which of those images refer to news, characters and moments we remember – or we ignore. Or how these scenes recombine into particular stories, public events or events devoid of any information while we are led to imagine situations, relationships and outcomes between the episodes portrayed.
In front of this great collection of paintings, we are taken by a narrative labyrinth of ciphered notes, private and public images, all doomed to the ephemerality of lost posts and emptied news.
The panoramic view that Silvia proposes for these images points to an original solution. The plural diversity of subjects shown intertwines with the countless possible associations formed by the sequences of the scenes as fields of reading. In the manner of a crossword puzzle composed of images in continuous visual unfolding, our gaze is driven to trace surfaces, identify signals and build connections from a kaleidoscope of fragments of reality.
The arrangement of the screens is alternated by luminous and shiny metallic steel frames., bronze, copper and brass that reflect the immersive look of the painting and lend rhythm to the intense flow of images. As breathing and contemplation zones, open a time interval that seems to condense the imagistic experiences in a plane of glistening and silent emanations.
The agile circulation of digital images in electronic media reveals, on the other hand, their ephemeral temporal nature that leads them to both disappearance and obsolescence. In your poetic thought, Silvia appropriates apparently common everyday scenes and transfers them from the digital medium to the material support, handmade and analog of painting, medium that lends a sense of permanence and duration to images.
The panoramic view of so many flowing images connects us directly to the digital browsing experience on mobile screens and social networks., profusion that comes to us daily producing discontinuous stories and narrative breaks. The dynamics of digital images no longer allow us to know the origin and history of each moment., place or meeting, in their respective times and places, in the face of accelerated production, dissemination and consumption of information over networks.
The panorama of scenes by Silvia Velludo proposes a reflection on the saturation of images in digital media and the search for permanence and meaning that an artistic work ideally seeks in its essence. The poetic game established between the private universe of his images and the news and posts on social networks tensions our perception of reality.. Just like a device that displays memories and remembrances, we are seduced by curiosity and the imaginative spirit that so many images put together are able to stimulate. Silvia's installation of paintings reveals itself, and, an inventory of experiences to be reconstituted that, like time capsules, retains an existential dimension that the images resist revealing.
Silvia Velludo's artistic proposition gives us, and, an experience contrary to that celebrated by the frenzy of the digital world: the intuitive deceleration that reestablishes poetic correlations between the real and its representations from the affective and artisanal appropriation of images. The contemporaneity of his paintings and questions intertwine with the dominant and fragile omnipresence of digital images in our daily lives..