Natureza Econômica

Paulo Climachauska

From Aug 22 to Oct 17 2014

LURIXS: Arte Contemporânea is very pleased to present, from August 22nd to October 17th, Natureza Econômica [Economic Nature], Paulo Climachauska’s second solo show at the gallery. Surprisingly rendering in an array of vivid colours, the exhibition brings together ten works from the artist’s new, namesake series. 

Paulo Climachauska’s works are deeply rooted in his fascination with the interrelationships between economy, society and the arts, examining the general view of art as a socio-economic element and its association to economic abstraction and financial derivatives. The artist’s dual-layered approach to this subject, consistent, in a way, to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s (1886-1969) postulation that “less is more”, uses icons rooted in our collective imaginary as an analogy to question established ways of interpretation. In fact, the evolution of Climachauska’s works can be widely attributed to the way he rethinks, reconsiders and deconstructs standards. From redrawing the world through the systematic repetitive action of subtracting mathematical operations, to using figures common to gambling and speculation environments, the artist reasons therefore as an economist, a sociologist, a political pundit.

Climachauska’s new series, Natureza Econômica [Economic Nature], carries on the artist’s roving in using art as a way to conduct and challenge spectators to contemplate on the connections among the value of the arts, people and society. However, the colourful representations, as well as its given titles (Dune, Archipelago, Waterfall, and so on) puzzles the observer. Are these economic graphs or representational nature paintings? Could it be both? Is nature being used as an illusion to convey a message or as a veil to lightly obscure it? Open-ended questions are put out there through the rearrangement of these familiar images into unique artworks, as the artist acknowledges, however, that in the end, each observer is the only natural and genuine interpreter.

 

About the artist

Graduated in History and Archaeology at the University of São Paulo, Climachauska had his fi rst exhibition in 1991 at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo. His works are deeply rooted in his fascination with the interrelationships between economy, society and the arts, examining the general view of art as a socio-economic element and its association to economic abstraction and fi nancial derivatives. Following his participation in the 26th International São Paulo Biennial, the 8th Biennial of Cuenca, and the 14th Biennial of San Juan, his works have been featured in solo exhibitions at Moderna Musset (Stockholm, Sweden), Oi Futuro Flamengo (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Project 01 (Park Gaufl strafl e, Germany), and Paço Imperial (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), among other important galleries and institutions. The artist has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Museu da Escultura Brasileira (São Paulo), Chateau de Fermelmont (Fermelmont, Belgium), Vancouver Biennial (Vancouver, Canada), Fundacíon Pedro Barrié de la Maza (Vigo, Spain), Henry Moore Institute (Leeds, England), and the Toyota Contemporary Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), to name a few. Climachauska’s works are also present in major art collections, both in Brazil and beyond, such as the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Instituto Itaú Cultural, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain, Lhoist Collection, and Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Paulo Climachauska lives and works in São Paulo.

  

Economic Nature | Alexandre Melo

Paulo Climachauska’s work has always captivated me like a contradiction that combines seduction and perplexity. Nothing is obvious. Or better, everything seems evident, but nothing being what it seems, we are left no certainties as to what this ‘everything’ (or nothing) would be that seems so evident. Is this after all, easy or difficult?  The invitation to write this article for Climachauska’s exhibition of the series of paintings Natureza Econômica at the LURIXS gallery offers me the opportunity to try to explain or perhaps elucidate this paradox in a couple of pages. First of all, I believe there are two methods to try to write about an artist’s work (or in this case, in more modest scope, these works). Let us call them the formalist and the contextual methods.

Secondly, adopting what we will call here the formalist method, let us pretend we are looking at Climachauska’s paintings as if ignorant of the references and processes that generated them. We have become thus observers equipped solely with the personal experience of being confronted with the art works. And we should bear in mind that there is some license in the term “solely”. However uninformed, the confrontation will set into motion all of our observers’ own memories. Imbued with this role, I see before us an abstract painting, seductive in its geometric refinement, elegant rhythm, rigorous composition, and flavorful wisdom in the use of color.  Suggesting more than (or perhaps less than) a minimalist trend, we could perhaps note by including the painter’s earlier work, an obsessive drive for “substraction,” which is also a way of emptying out clichés. Examining the works more closely, perhaps they are not true abstract paintings, but stylized renderings of mountainous landscapes. Are they abstract or figurative? Whichever the case may be, I enjoy looking at them and it is easy to imagine them being perfectly placed on a living room wall.  Looking at them I am reminded of the mountain and valley in front of my house in Northern Portugal, and I find myself trying to pin point through those colors, the various intensities and positions of the sun. But that is not quite it. I am then reminded of my childhood fascination with color pencils and that my favorite way of looking at them was seeing them lined up next to each other in the box, more even than using them. I remember while still a child trying to solve this contradiction by drawing with every color available in the box so as to wear them down uniformly, making sure the pencil tips stayed level across all the colors in the box. Is this unexpected memory pertinent to our topic? How could I tell… in the absence of an instructions booklet on how to see this painting, or, for that matter, any other painting. (A booklet that either hasn’t been furnished to me or that I failed to believe in.)  Since I find myself at an exhibition, I am taken back to this story of geometric abstraction of hard-edge abstraction in particular. This subjective, naïve and formalist stance allows me the pleasure of seeing these paintings through my own personal experience in general and artistic background in particular.  This pleasure is heightened by the perversity of oblique and broken lines that I may find more exciting than straight lines, or possible comparisons (of colors, angles, rhythms) such as is the case, for example, of the 2011 series Modelo para Armar (Model Requires Assembly).  A comparison that opens a trove of speculative conjectures (which go beyond the scope of this article) about the unity and diversity of the painter’s various series that seem so diverse, on the logic at play in Climachauska’s work.

Let us now look at Climachauska’s work through the contextual method. Confronted with his paintings I already know that the inclination of these lines stands for statistical values in economics, just as they make their appearance in the graphs with which economists like to embellish (they love to show off colorful tables on television) the display of their ignorance. I then look at broken lines sloping sharply to the bottom left-hand corner, and I think, for example, of the graph I saw recently on television showing the declining share prices of the bank Banco Espírito Santo. An event that is well on its way to becoming the largest bankruptcy in recent economic history, and, if our suspicions are correct, one of the most noteworthy chapters in the history of organized crime in Portugal. Other ascending lines remind me of the tables I have been following daily over the years, signaling the growth of the Portuguese external debt. From this point of view, the paintings offer us an alternative way to deal with the basic data of the social and economic reality around us. A way to question authority and create a parody of the stereotypical discourse employed by institutional heads who habitually resort to numbers to disguise corruption and incompetence. But this act of distancing is not carried out through traditional stereotypes of criticism (the Marxist vulgate) that believes art should have medicinal use (in diagnosis or therapy) for the social ills that assail us. Art cannot have this role, given the forms of its insertion in culture (practically an exclusive privilege of an elite) and economics (inevitably dependent on the market). To exert such a medicinal role, art would have to depend on the existence of well informed, honest and competent political or civil organizations, in other words, on entities that most contemporary societies are evidently unable to create. What art can be, is what it is: a form of thought and work that stirs intelligence and sensibilities in particular ways. In a way that forces us to believe once more that it is possible to see things in a way that has not yet been invented, and that it is as yet impossible to understand completely. You could ask me at this point, which, after all, is the most correct way of looking at Paulo Climachauska’s paintings. I could answer that there isn’t a single way that is more correct, and that this ambiguity, an eventually perverse ambiguity, generates the cold semantic tension that is the secret of the fascination brought about by this painter’s work.

I will now open, once more, as if for the first time, my boxes of colored pencils.

 

Alexandre Melo, born in Lisboa, is an art critic, curator, essayist, film-maker and Portuguese professor. Cultural Advisor from the Prime Minister of Portugal, José Sócrates, from 2005 to the end of the mandate. Curator from Ellipse Foundation.