Exhibition "Writing-mirage" by André Azevedo

The grid only exists when created, it is an organizational structure, composed of horizontal and vertical lines that draw a division system in space, so it is not found organically in the environment. Andre Azevedo combines the desire to challenge it with the investigation of botanical images, operating in a torsion field of traditional writing and visual code.

in the show Writing-mirage we come across a unique universe, presented for the first time in this depth, which navigates in chromatic nuances, in which blue, red, green and black penetrate the fabric and transform into figuration. We live under the dominion of codes that overlap the experience of the world and distance us from direct reality, and it is in this coded world in which Escrita-Miragem operates. André Azevedo is an organizer of signs, a semiologist in action, his poetics investigates the plastic possibilities of typing, a balance between the hardness of the machine and the lyrical nature of floral figurative representation.

The work Datilográfica 9 engenders an abstraction and promotes the opening to new universes. Standing in front of this piece is like when decades and decades ago we tuned into radio stations. A piece of furniture/means of communication, the radio allows us to feel the sound waves of the stations that transmit electromagnetic signals at certain frequencies, which we tune into until we find a frequency within the circuit. Datilográfica 9 is the tuning of the exhibition, inviting us to enter this frequency and appreciate a poetic apprehension of the coded world.

Azevedo tunes the smallest particle that is a letter, part of the word image and decomposes it, recomposes it, remakes it, reconstructs it, and transforms it into an image. The works on cotton fabric have no frame, the sides stretched on a wooden frame are tied to the making of the typewriter, in some works there are small clues that the image is forged by characters. The revealing of layers becomes evident with the carbon papers, where it is possible to see each letter that crossed the surface and became light, turned into a visual score.

Regarding the choice of projected images, the illustrations revisit life and the natural elements of the earth and were appropriated from the book “Natural History: Life of Animals, Plants and the Earth – Botany”, which came from illustrated encyclopedic collections, popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, in a pre-digital life. The work mimics the grammar of the machine and, at the same time, poetically corrupts it, opening cracks in the system of signification. The flowers, branches, and twigs materialize in the Is Ms As Gs Es and Ms in a rhythmic dialogue between machine-like rigidity and ephemeral organicity.

The relationship with painting became closer. Azevedo operates with textiles using pictorial thought and expands the possibilities of translating images by returning to the analogical. In works that replicate figures, at first glance they are identical, but on closer inspection, small discrepancies in color emerge, drawings that are outlined in a different way, making the repeated works absolutely unique in their formation.

It uses software that pixelates the image and translates it into code to create an image. The technology already exists in the field of printing, but it is in the image translation that Azevedo re-signifies it. Using carbon and gesture, he adds individuality to the piece by subverting technical reproducibility through the unpredictable. The writing escapes control and the aura insists on appearing. Azevedo appropriates the mechanical nature of the device, leaving the writing to the machine, instructing the channels to distribute ink in the form of graphic signs, covering the surface and then covering it up so that something is presented in an image-like manner, producing a contrast between the color of the ink and the surface.

Writing is the science of the enjoyment of language, the possibility of a dialectic of desire, of an unpredictability of enjoyment. For Roland Barthes, the written text always provides proof of desire: it is writing itself. What Azevedo proposes is to overflow writing; his practice conceives through writing a space for poetic enjoyment and new forms of image perception.

The pictorial approach is both material and mental. The artist relies on ideas such as Vilém Flusser, in which culture is an attempt to deceive nature through technology and machinations. The numerical rules invented by humans, in the abstract, are capable of describing, explaining and even predicting sensory experience. The codes are so powerful that we use them to construct alternative versions of so-called reality, parallel worlds, and multiple experiences of the here and now. In this understanding, every artifact is produced through the action of shaping matter following an intention; manufacturing corresponds to the strict meaning of the term in + formation, shaping something – in Azevedo's poetry, of translating letters into images.

The device becomes not just a mechanical device, but a complex entity, a compass between technology, culture and humanity. Technological intervention/interaction organizes and transforms reality and art, modulating new ways of experiencing things. When typing, Azevedo organizes graphic signs and draws them, bringing action and thought into complete cohesion.

The typewriter acts as a mediator between nature and culture, creating another layer of complexity in the relationship between artist and viewer. This device also influences communication, creating new forms of expression and interpretation. In this sense, technology is not only a means of transmitting information, it is also a system that shapes meaning and message. Azevedo's poetic practice, in addition to guiding thoughts, acts directly in the encounter with the other, and it is only when a written work encounters the other that it achieves its intention, a kind of creative act.

By investigating various plastic possibilities of typing on textile support, he generates images from typography, in which each digit leaves its mark on the surface, with stains of different intensities. In this logic of operation, André finds a possible destination for writing in the process of transforming typography into texture and writing into image. He reconfigures typing in visual form, adding material body to the fleeting.

Escrita-Miragem is an attempt to capture what dissolves, the movement of approaching and moving away to decipher the drawing that passes through the carbon and is pigmented on the canvas, creating a symbolic surface. This is how the artist recovers a possible destiny for writing, hybrid, technical and sensitive, in which the code provokes and projects a future for writing based on visuality. This future is undisciplined and, above all, dynamic. André Azevedo decodes a future from the past.

Mariane Beline and Luana Rosiello

Service
Exhibition | Writing-mirage
From May 27th to July 26th
Monday to Friday, 10 am to 19 pm, Saturday, 10 am to 15 pm