Hudinilson in his studio
Above, portrait of Hudinilson in his studio, 80s.

What can art? Hudinilson Júnior always did what he wanted and the response to this irreverence was to become a point outside the curve within the universe of Brazilian art. His trajectory is marked by the collapse of the subject, explosion of the relationship with the object and radicalization of performances. With sophisticated poetic vigor, added to bodily and relational experiences, Hudinilson leaves a production closely linked to São Paulo, whether in performances, graffiti or xerox art.

Many of his works appear in the search for the simultaneity between thought and visuality, as in the day he surprised the city with the image of his penis xerographed in an immense outdoor, near the Ibirapuera Park. The reactions provoked by the audacity pointed to the dismantling of the hierarchies of the exhibition space, destruction of the power of localization of the work and at the same time revealing the irreverence of the subject.

"Untitled" work by the artist,
“Untitled” work by the artist, produced in the 80s.

Every movement to activate the de - order runs through the works that now occupy the 600 square meters of the Jaqueline Martins gallery, whose owner is also the exhibition's curator. The novelties are the paintings on canvas, made when the artist was still an art student in the 1970s. A curious tension permeates the plurality of Hudinilson's work, one of the pioneers of the xerox art movement in Brazil. Best character of his own work, when creating Exercise to see me (1981), disrupts critical thinking by simulating the sexual act with a photocopy machine. It is exciting to follow him in this experimentation, producing other meanings for man and machine. How not to remember Hélio Oiticica when he sentenced: “try the experimental”? Hudinilson expresses himself, without shame, through various languages ​​that, in some circumstances, becomes an instrument of speculation. For the critic Jean-Claude Bernardet, “the fragmentation of the body by xerox, converts it into abstract landscapes, in which the fragments vanish”. In his performance with the copying machine, he uses his body as a matrix for the reproduction and investigation of visual possibilities.

In 1979, Hudinilson creates the group 3 Nós3, with artists Rafael França and Mário Ramiro. The union by elective affinities was of friends who agreed on art and the way of making art. Until 1982 they intervened in various parts of São Paulo, practicing the playful and critical reappropriation of the city. The repertoire of actions ranges from the bagging of public monuments to the intervention in the breathing hole of a tunnel, to the sealing of art gallery doors. All understood as a revolutionary mark against the rationalist and controlling determinations of the metropolis. Even working with the group, he never abandons his individual production that has lasted more than three decades.

Since the beginning, Hudinilson has maintained a strong relationship with collage, the starting point for a commentator phase. To this are added experiments in woodcuts, a support that most Brazilian artists have used, using decals of photographic images. Hudinilson spent long hours choosing pictures of naked bodies that he took from American magazines. In 1984, he abandoned these models and focused all his attention around himself, when he dedicated himself to Narcisse/Study for self-portrait (1984). In this “essay” she dialogues with the myth of Narcissus and creates her own visual identity. The project involves a series of works, as a kind of “opera”. Narciso becomes an obsession for him, who, in his latest collage notebooks, reveals his interest in the study of the male nude.

Hudinilson Jr, Lovers and Cases
Hudinilson Jr, Lovers and Cases

In the 1980s, the place of Hudinilson's art is the street, where he invents graffiti with drawings incorporated into the writing, in a claim for a space of total freedom. His mentor and accomplice, Alex Vallauri (1949-1987), was the first Brazilian artist to embrace graffiti. Like him, Hudinilson works with masks or stencils in search of a new formal space to create, a resistance in vain, as if some naturalness were possible in art.

In life, Hudinilson saved himself from experiencing the illusory vertigo of belonging to the art market and participating in internationalization through repetitive marathons of fairs and biennials. It was only after his death that his works arrived abroad and, in June, he arrived at Art Basel, Switzerland, the oldest and most revered art fair in the world.

Hudinilson Jr.
Until September 06, 2019
At the Jaqueline Martins Gallery
Dr Street Cesário Mota Junior, 433 – Vila Buarque, São Paulo


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