A Parte Funda Da Piscina

Mauricio Valladares

From Dec 13 2017 to Feb 24 2018

“A Parte Funda da Piscina” (“The deeper part of the pool”) is the first solo show by the photographer, radialist, DJ and journalist Mauricio Valladares. Curated by Raul Mourão, the exhibition gathers 23 photographs selected from the book Preto e Branco (“Black and White”), released by the publisher house Automática.

During the organization of Preto e Branco, Raul dived into the collection archive of more than 1000 photos, analogically created between 1972 and 2003 from which he selected 142 for entering the publication, that counts with texts from Luiz Camillo Osório and Frederico Coelho, with graphic project by Christiano Calvet.

The exhibition brings the images that had most moved Mourão during this process, that took more than a year, period in which the plastic artist build an intimacy and affective relation with the photographic material.

“In spite of Mauricio’s photographic production being associated to music because of his big actuation together with bands like Paralamas do Sucesso, Legião Urbana, Los Hermanos and various other artists of brazilian and international music, both on record covers and on live registrations at stage, this exhibition presents an other side, less known, of Mauricio’s work. An autoral and documental production, where Valladares registries the carnival, the Maracanã stadium, the city and it’s characters”, says Raul.

The title for the exhibition is a provocation, an expression that Mauricio himself uses at his radio show when he talks about a selection of works or a very special work by a determined artist.

 

About the artist

Photographer, journalist, radialist and DJ, Mauricio Valladares (b. Rio de Janeiro, 1953) started photographing in 1971 and has music as a main theme of his work. He registered on stage and backstage, besides photoshoots, great names of Brazilian music, such as Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Los Hermanos, Lulu Santos, Rita Lee, Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal, Skank and international artists like Bob Marley, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and The Who, among others. He signed emblematic cover albums from Legião Urbana, Os Paralamas do Sucesso, Ed Motta, Renato Russo, Alceu Valença and others. He is the official photographer from Paralamas, band on which he published a book covering the first 25 years of career. Mauricio was also the photographer for Jornal do Brasil and for Revista de Domingo at the year of it’s creation.

As a journalist, collaborated with the Jornal da Música, Revista Bizz, Som Três and Pipoca Moderna, both writing and photographing.

In the year of 1982, after returning from London where he lived for two years, launched in his program Rock Alive at Radio Fluminense international bands yet unknown in Brazil, like The Cure, New Order, U2, The Jam, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Beat and Madness. He also revealed national bands like Legião Urbana, Os Paralamas do Sucesso, Capital Inicial, Plebe Rude and Biquíni Cavadão. After his passage by Fluminense FM, Valladares hosted the shows Roncatripa (1988), Radiolla (Globo FM) and RoNcaRoNca (Imprensa FM, Portal Usina do Som, Rádio Cidade and Oi FM). Today he is a collaborator at Rádio Globo and hostes the show RoNcaRoNca at the site www.roncaronca.com.br where in the last years he launched some of the most important names from the new generation of brazilian music, such as Tulipa Ruiz, Marcelo Jeneci, Rômulo Froes, Tatá Aeroplano, Bárbara Eugênia, Tiê, Mombojó, Do Amor, Metá Metá, Gabriel Muzak, Boogarins and many others.

Since the beginning of his career, Valladares has also documented anonymous characters interacting with the city and big popular manifestations such as Carnival and football. At the 80’s he created the photoshoot Photographers, registering 30 important Carioca professionals at their homes or workspaces. Influenced by Eugene Smith, Jim Marshall, Gered Mankowitz, Cartier Bresson, David Bailey and the classic movie Blow Up, de Michelangelo Antonioni. The person is the object of interest of his photography.