ONE PERSON ONLY (or ONE LONELY PERSON)

(in Portuguese, the phrase “Uma Pessoa Só” has at least two meanings – One Person Only or One Lonely Person).

 

Multidisciplinary event and exhibition

Epicentro Cultural (2015)

“An artist needs to be like Jean Cocteau. You need to be many people at the same time and not just one.” Alejandro Jodorowsky

 

The visual works of Arnaldo Dias Baptista are symmetrically diverse and complex in framing terms. What now can be seen as the maximum expression of a conscience that psychosomatically sheds fantastic scenes and creative exuberance free of norms could also be characterised as a combination of the representative, the absurd, the unreal and the unconscious – surrealists’ typical methodology.

It turns out that the compositional elements that Arnaldo prints on his images do not end there. Humor and scientism are also part of the artist’s production, who has already stated that the best way to investigate how things are – be they natural, social, artificial or conceptual – is by adopting the scientific method, combined with the poetry of circumstance created in the composition.

The product of this visual investigation is a wide range of situations where the oscillation between the comic and the idyllic is noticeable, the first aspect being one of the axes of the rupture in the conception of OEuvre d’art caused by Marcel Duchamp. Humor is an instrument of rebellion and liberation, which in Arnaldo’s art works for the benefit of a less austere and gentler construction of reality.

Although, at first glance, the works evoke chromatic extravagance, synesthetic perception of the world and inversion of plans present in psychedelic aesthetics, in Arnaldo’s creative prism it is not possible to find the archetype of the artist divorced from the world and faithful only to the imperatives of his art. Even working with an unconscious – creator by definition -, who spontaneously provides his own formulas, Arnaldo develops his visual production as a man-artist freed from his era, reality, norms, techniques and taste of his time. Above all, Arnaldo is contemporary and his production expresses the sum of his relationship with the world.

As a visual artist, Arnaldo Dias Baptista presents himself in front of the Universe and this encounter determines the symbols that are articulated by the senses in sensitive images. The hybrid and trans-aesthetic language revealed in the production exposed here communicates, above all, the dependence of one sense in relation to another: the syncretism of the musical work with the visual metaphor in favor of utopia – the perceptual fullness and renunciation of an isolated system of assimilation of phenomena. The skill in the multiple manifestations of language in favor of greater communication – in one person.

The translation of the artist’s worldview into visual works is presented in the form of an invitation to playful experimentation of the different fields of human knowledge: Jodorowsky himself, advocate of the marriage of science with spirit, states that the contemporary artist should not be the afflicted and intimate with the ills of existence, but rather the wise scientist who educates himself when experiencing the possibilities of life. It seems that Arnaldo always knew that.

 

Curator Mariana Coggiola

 

The show involved an exhibition space of Arnaldo Dias Baptista’s visual works; screening of the documentary “Loki! Arnaldo Baptista”, directed by Paulo Henrique Fontenelle and produced by Canal Brasil; screening of the short documentary Maldito Popular Brasileiro, by Patrícia Moran; lecture by Cassiano Reis, offering a chronological overview of the history of psychedelia in Brazil; performance by artist Juliano Gauche, playing tracks from “Loki?” (1974), Arnaldo Baptista’s first solo album; and a VJ set by Mechanical Astronaut.

 

 

One Person Only (or One Lonely Person)

Multidisciplinary event and exhibition

Epicentro Cultural

10 de abril a 22 de maio de 2015

São Paulo – SP