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09/21/1991 - 12/10/1991 

BIANNAL FOUNDATION OF SÃO PAULO

10/01/1999 - 10/20/2000

SPACE OUTSIDE THE SERIES

09/01/2000 - 10/30/2000

SÃO PAULO CULTURAL CENTER

03/14/2002 - 04/07/2002 

MUSEUM OF ART OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

11/14/2010 - 12/20/2010

MUSEUM OF ART OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

03/14/2012 - 04/07/2012 

FUNARTE - DF

March 2008

CENTRO CULTURAL HORACIO CERVANTES

COLIMA - MEXICO

Since 2006 

UNIVERSITY OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

Visual arts

The last international exhibition of Jair Correia's masks was at the Horácio Cervantes Cultural Center in the city of Colima, Mexico in 2008. In 2010, he celebrated 40 years of professional activity with the exhibition “Icons - Other Words” at the MARP Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto. In 2011, at RibeirãoShopping in Ribeirão Preto, its mask exhibition was attended by over 40,000 visitors. The works from the collection “Icons - Other Words” won the “2012 Funarte Contemporary Art Prize” in 2012 and were exhibited at Galeria Fayga Ostrower – Cultural Complex of Funarte Brasília from August to October 2012.
21ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo

21st São Paulo International Biennial

 

SIDINGS

by Francisco Amendola

 
Everything that is hallucinatory obscures our horizon and besieges our hope. If the objects of the apparent world disintegrate, we reconstruct them in an artistic way for pleasure or enjoyment. The information we receive is not linear, but simultaneous and discontinuous, and, primitively, we pass it on to the instinct that returns it adulterated in the form of signs.

Jean Dubuffet, during the last war, filled the walls of Paris with images and messages drawn on the walls, often obscene, mounted on paper and sand, combined with torn posters, in a clear sense of denunciation and protest.

Since then, the world has been filled with roughs and the city of São Paulo would not escape the rule.

Graffiti no longer protesting or denouncing, but of a decorative nature to decorate cities with more joy and participation, with a naive connotation. It became metalanguage.

Ribeirão Preto would not be excluded and, as we are always buying a product in our image and not our needs, we hire professional graffiti artists and graffiti artists to graffiti our public buildings, as is the case of SESC in Ribeirão Preto. Alex Vallauri was here and left his mark. The big concern, at the moment, is how to make perennial and

conserved a product that was born ephemeral.

Jair Correia sat down in this city, joined the local visual arts movement, and went out to the streets to collect material and doodle. Multimedia artist, from filmmaker to watchdog, he had to appear at the Bienal de São Paulo, via Ribeirão Preto, via SARP - Salão de Arte de Ribeirão Preto. The SARP is the cutting-edge Salon in which many have outlined themselves, which, no matter how local it is,

it's the proving ground for getting there.

Jair introduced the detail of the wall, the siding for the easel, and the framed greenhouse into the studio.

Intimate, he made comics his graphic and plastic expression, dominating the technical issue in a perfect, sensitive narrative form, without the need for rules.

It projects on its material, on its so-called ephemeral sidings, something sensitive,

something essential that is self-sufficient.

It transforms its gray sidings with the melancholy scars of construction into a cheerful and dynamic curtain, without the cultural clichés that we might

call it materialized conceptualism.

Using a spray, the graffiti artist's basic equipment, molding his classic figures

drawn from the history of painting, he arrives at the new without worrying about the new and asks the practical question of painting. And, parodying Marcel Duchamp, who questions the privileged status of the art object as an object manufactured by hand, Jair Correia made the ready-made a transcendent and original work, a product that corresponds to our image and,

why not also say, to our needs.
 

21st São Paulo International Biennial

09/21/1991 - 12/10/1991
BIANNAL FOUNDATION OF SÃO PAULO

Máscaras & Grafites

Masks & Graffiti

LIFE AND MASK

Amilton Monteiro

Coordinator of the Performing Arts Course at the Centro Universitário Barão de Mauá,

Ph.D. in Theater from USP and Actor

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I have the impression that the idea of theater - taken in its most essential sense, historically and metaphysically - is so present in the human spirit that we are hardly aware of it.

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Since Antiquity, passing through the Middle Ages, crossing the centuries and western standards of culture, the idea of a "theater of the world" still remains (without referring to the eastern theater, whose trajectory is still full of religiosity,

perhaps inaccessible to our eyes and hearts).

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However, in the meeting of these two mentalities, a common idea, that of a manipulative God, creator of the plot, owner of all the characters and their characters, conductor of the comedy

(or tragedy) of the lives of all of us human puppets.

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This ancestral idea manifests itself, even today, in an almost "natural" way. We live, after all, in the "society of the spectacle", we take the symbol for the thing itself, and for some time sociologists and psychologists have been postulating "roles" that we are condemned to play throughout our lives. Thus, the world is one big theater, and "everybody acts"

(as recalls the motto of Shakespeare's Globe Theater).

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Our "masks" disguise us in order to reveal ourselves. And here I link the impression confessed at the beginning to remember those two masks, the one that smiles and the one that cries, the one that exalts and the one that moans.

The mask is the theater itself and life itself.

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The mask has a magical meaning, even before it becomes a link

(or of reconnection, religion).

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The god of the theater, Dionysus, is made known to us through three great mythical origins (epiphanies), in which he was presented in effigy, statue or mask.


The fact is therefore transcendent: the divinity will be inaccessible, except through the artifice of

representation of a face that is not a face, which will always be a mask.

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But if we put ourselves behind that mask, we experience the feeling of omnipotence. For a few moments, hidden, we can put ourselves in the place of divinity. And look at the world with different eyes. And that instantly makes us close to divinity, which is why, when we remove the mask, we can no longer be as before...

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I firmly believe that this dialectic, of revealing by concealing and hiding by revealing, can be achieved and apprehended by looking at a true theatrical mask.

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All that is needed is that non-technical experience of simply letting the eye abandon itself to that gaze.

It is time to say that these reflections were provoked by the artist Jair Correia. In his workshop, I went to see the collection of masks he is creating for the collection of

Performing Arts Course at Centro Universitário Barão de Mauá.

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I know the work of this singular artist, but what is presented is always a new revelation. He is not satisfied with the mere reproduction of images of masks - from the Greek ones to those of Commedia Dell'Arte, passing through the Roman ones of the Atelana comedy. No. He wants to print the soul of what these faces represent. I said faces not out of distraction, because those leather or paper masks, in their apparent immobility, exude life. Take one in your hands: tilt it one way, then the other. Look at it from top to bottom and vice versa. Then place it in different planes in relation to the light. Ready! The magic happens. We are impressed by the potential mobility of those "immobilities". I write trying to describe the indescribable. The mask is a living, sensitive, profound experience. The mask "tells" everyone and everyone.

Each mask is a universe.

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Don't even talk about carnival masquerades around here, please! We speak of a disguise of a different nature, of dialectic, I repeat, that touches us deeply, that "historicizes" us, if you like, but that, above all, frees our imagination to the limits of knowledge.

essentials - and may Plato forgive us!

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Jair Correia's masks are works of art in themselves. But, for us, who live in the theater, they are - in addition, instruments of a technical nature. The actor lives off the mask, that is, the character and the theater are only fully realized through the live presence of the actor. The relationship with the mask, in this sense, is indispensable to him, and if we can speak of "technique", the actor's relationship with all

these masks are, in addition to enriching, fundamental.

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This is the reason why the Performing Arts Course at Centro Universitário Barão de Mauá, in good time, understood the importance of an unprecedented study in Brazil, that of Improvisation with Masks (which is already being taught by Míriam Fontana).

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If there's anything better than that, it's just the fact that the masks were created by Jair Correia.

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SEPTEMBER 99
 

Masks & Graffiti

10/01/1999 - 10/20/2000

SPACE OUTSIDE THE SERIOUS - DIEDERICHSEN BUILDING

masks

 

MASK

Sebastian Milare

Theater critic and scholar

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Disguise. Dissimulation of the Self by the Other. By putting on a mask, the individual annuls his identity by assuming another character. Whatever its purpose, it will trigger the first human need to alter objective reality. It re-links the current to the archaic, retraces the sacred path of man, as it was through the alterity provided by the mask that man

represented and established contacts with the deities.

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The mask is chaos. It appears in the undifferentiated world where divinity/man/animal is a unit that metamorphoses, eliminating its intrinsic differences so that the self is also eliminated, with the collective prevailing. And the mask is its instrument. It concretely fixes aspects of reality, making it an archetype. A paradigm. That is why masks were used interchangeably in archaic societies, whether in Africa, the East, Europe, or the Americas. It is a form of expression superimposed on the personal expression of the man who wears it.

Act of mythical order that generates otherness and drama.

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The drama! Tracing the origin of the mask, the theater ends up manifesting itself as a cosmic force in the midst of popular rituals of cult to deities. The mask explains its nature: the disguise, the dissimulation of the Self by the Other. It is the pretense of being a god, on the part of men, and of being a man, on the part of the gods. Often, they resort to animals to express paradigms, and archetypes. But this dialectical movement of the Self and the Other is changing with societies. The contemporary actor maintains the sacred stigma of the mask: not using a structure of canvas, plaster, or any other material, but leaving his face free of personal expressions so that the Other, the character, can manifest itself. And with his masks, the actor fixes aspects of human reality, making them paradigms for the contemporary man in his daily life. Even to the man who doesn't go to the theater. The mask manifested in a great actor is strong and is transmitted through those who have an energetic relationship with it, as a spectator.

The same occurs in other contemporary rituals,

in which masks emerge, like rock concerts.

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But if the face itself as a support for masks that emerge and disappear is the commonplace "mode" of modern theater, masks made in different

types of materials have not been banned.

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Already in the Renaissance, Commedia Dell'Arte appeared, not only using masks but creating a gallery of stylized types (intonations, crystallized tics, all fixed psychology), which were virtual "masks". An actor would specialize in one character and do it their whole life. Many times, he inherited the character from his father, who also spent his whole life doing it, and bequeathed it to his son, who would continue the tradition. They were, therefore, actors of vast experience. This means that the dramatic use of the mask requires great preparation from the actor. If you just wear the mask and hang it over your face, you can be a reveler, never an actor. By putting on the mask, the experienced actor is transformed.

Your body transforms, your gestures transform, and even your breathing transforms.

It annuls its identity so that the Other can manifest itself.

This is an art: it is not a vague idea, it is knowledge.

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In fact, the use of the mask in modern theater has been parsimonious. However, increasingly aware of its playful and mythical value. Great artists dedicated themselves to the study and experimentation of the mask. Contemporary theater is the sum of all this and in it,

the mask regains its importance.

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However, if the actor requires preparation and a lot of experience to use it, art – in addition to craftsmanship – is also required of those who create and make them. It is not enough to know how to use the material, you must have the sensitivity of the mask. In that small structure made to cover the face or part of it, the poetic idea of a type or an entity is concentrated. There is the archetype that will propitiate the creation of the actor. There is the Other. The masks created by Jair Correia belong to the superior understanding of the mask as an archetypal expression. And they belong to this territory because they were not generated just as an aesthetic pronouncement but as an instrument of the actor's art. They are objects that are only justified on stage, covering the actor's face. However, they are also works of art, with their indispensable autonomy: they enchant the spectator, tell him things,

creates an ineffable state, they are permanent announcements of dramatic action.

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Certainly, Jair Correia's excellence as a plastic artist extends to masks, but what gives him the sensitivity of the mask is his condition as a man of the theater. He has the life experience of wearing a mask in a decade of work with Grupo Fora do SériO. He knows her intimacies and establishes a creative dialogue with her. He deeply studies the history of the mask in different civilizations and this consolidates the artist's familiarity with the created object.

Never reducing the object to a purely aesthetic act, always preserving its function.

And it is the function that makes the mask a sacred object.

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Seeing Jair Correia's set of masks is a privilege.

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SEPTEMBER 2000 
 

Máscaras

masks

09/01/2000 - 10/30/2000
SÃO PAULO CULTURAL CENTER

Jair Correia

 

UP TO DATE

Radha Abramo

Art Criticism

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Jair Correia works in two dimensions: he appropriates supports that already bear the mark of history and of their already performed functions, such as old wood, ironwork, canvas, coverings, or old doors, and on this heavy material, riddled with signs and profound meanings, the artist processes his rite of passage as a plastic artist. He paints and draws, showing his taste, the pleasure of art making, the meticulousness, the care with the rescue of the support that receives other images, recovered from other times and authored by some masters,

with its well-known actors.

In the current phase of the artist's work, figures similar to those of Bosch appear, recreated and other figures of men, traced, according to the image and likeness of God, drawn, painted, and punctuated with model marks for learning target shooting.

In the two themes treated, in the series and, mentioned above, the artist establishes the great contradiction, expands the universe of meanings when making the archeology of art, and takes up the past that interferes with the present and vice versa, building apparently different stories. He introduces new meanings into the planes of the paintings from the making of lines and masses of color on the respective surfaces. Here, Jair Correia brings together in a single article, with precise technical skill, the stories, and sensitivity of the past with its becoming. Of course, everything the artist touches is subject to criticism. In the first series of paintings, based on Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), the Netherlands, there are scenes from the popular imagination that transpire and refer to the Reformation against the sale of indulgences in the Roman Church. And this series of paintings makes a counterpoint to the painting of human models, whose bodies are punctuated with colors for target shooting training. There is no excuse, nor payment of indulgences that justify the definition of precise locations for shooting training and the slaughter of any being - whether human, plant, or animal. There is a close relationship between the two series of works from the artist's current phase of painting.

One leads to the other, they complement each other. There is no forgiveness.

Jair Correia's works ask me why there are areas of our body

for target practice. Answer who can.

Jair Correia

Jair Correia

03/14/2002 - 04/07/2002
MARP - MUSEUM OF ART OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

Encuentro Internacional de Commedia Dell'Arte

International Meeting of

Commedia Dell'Arte

 

The opening of the Exhibition took place with the speech of the authorities representing the institutions supporting the event: Augusto Albanez (Director General of EICOM), Juan José Árias (Director of Arts and Humanities of the Secretariat of Culture of the Government of the State of Colima), Adriana Santana (Administrator of the Horacio Cervantes Cultural Center), Regidor Del H. Ayuntamiento de Colima, and Jair Correia (Masquerade and Exhibitor). International, the proximity of the meeting of the Mexican, Brazilian, and Italian cultures (depending on the language of Commedia Dell'Arte) and they unveiled the ribbon for the official opening of the Exhibition and consequently of the Encuentro Internacional de Commedia Dell'Arte - EICOM. The quality of Jair Correia's masks and the care with which the exhibition was prepared had a positive impact on the audience._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad 5cf58d_ In particular, the way found to expose the masks, attached to a support that fixes them to the wall, but with a certain distance that allows for a highlight, next to a photograph of the mask being used by an actor during a show, with an addition of a small explanatory text and adequate lighting formed a set of great refinement.

International Meeting of Commedia Dell'Arte

March 2008

HORACIO CERVANTES CULTURAL CENTER

COLIMA - MEXICO

Icons - Other Words

 

MASKS BY JAIR CORREIA

Paul Klein

Visual Arts Critic and Curator

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*** Perhaps because he is a peaceful citizen (here, 3% irony), who retired a few years ago from the megacity of São Paulo, to live in the prosperous and rural Ribeirão Preto, Jair Correia remains far from the artistic circuits of fashion, grating, the megalopolis of São Paulo and the social circles of the big cities. But, every now and then, he returns to Sampa to see his friends and diversify his already vast cultural background. It was on one of these trips to our hometown (Jair's and mine), after he had enjoyed himself with Nelson Rodrigues and Bibi Ferreira, that we set up a meeting to catch up. We meet at Livraria da Vila, the original one, in Vila Madalena and, between longnecks, short and long, we extended the interview into the afternoon, observing elegant girls with their laptops It is ipads, adorable children, helpful waitresses, whose even portraits were kind enough to click! Therefore, this historic meeting is duly recorded and can be proven

in digital photos, with or without the use of photoshop.

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Now, having completed four decades of activities as an artist - plastic, visual, contemporary, multimedia - JC receives tribute at the height of his trajectory in this exhibition that Galeria Fayga Ostrower / Funarte presents as a prize for the 'Arte Contemporânea 2012' contest.

 

Certainly, in this period, Jair Correia has been torn between his many passions. Film director, playwright, and set designer confesses that, when alone, he prefers the visual arts, when he opts for collective, interactive projects, his preference is cinema. At this very moment, not even having finished the ambitious scenic project of mounting Beethoven's IX Symphony, this exhibition is being held

'Icons – Other Words' and is already working on the megaproject do 

3D animation movie Metamorphosis, with the prospect of being prepared throughout

a few years and that has everything to be one of the great cinematographic projects of his life.

 

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Fast, and intense, Jair Correia does not deny that he is a master of masks, he masters the art he inherited from Donato Sartori, a master of the subject, with whom he began the art of creating masks³.

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For him, the plastic arts are the ideal expression to practice in the solitude of the studio. As for cinema, this is his preference when it comes to working with a well-tuned, prepared team.

 

When talking to Jair – partly as a reporter, partly as a biographer, partly as an art critic – the evidence of correspondence is immediate. He speaks, with clarity and fluidity,

about places, people, and experiences that confirm that we are facing the soul,

at least contemporary.

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I am honored to share this moment of his, when JC takes from his studio, in Ribeirão Preto, seven panels that he has been producing for some time. It is a set of panels of a certain size (1.60 X 3 m to 3 X 7 m) where the material is formed from regular cutouts of 94 portal doors and 60 windows from the demolition of old houses. “I used them the way they came - he explains - cutting them and reassembling the parts within a larger space. Este 

support is mounted on a wooden structure and divided into parts to allow locomotion. After being painted, it goes through around 4 (or router), which digs the wood

upon prior digital drawing”.

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The result is pieces composed of robust wooden blocks, on which universal symbols used in industry and everyday conventions are engraved, which materialize

in his act of recording, printing, digging, and coloring.

 

They are pieces made of hardwood, old, which are amalgamated and bent before the hand of the artist. Any subsequent interference, conceived on this support, becomes in some way an interesting fact, even poetic. If we work hot iron or gouges or stilettos or chisels,

or carpentry machines there is, in any case, the possibility of seductive results.

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The content - in my opinion, this is relative - matters as a conductor of this   robustness reconstituted in the wood, malleability achieved by cutting and rearranging,

record painlessly with a machine.

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But Jair Correia goes further. It intends to leave something durable, immemorial, and timeless. For this, it selects symbols/signs of industry and everyday commerce, with which we are bombarded on a daily basis - brands, logos, stickers, bar codes - to perpetrate a true Code of Consumption and Daily Life - like the Codes of Hammurabi or of the Ten Commandments written by the prophet Moses. It rescues – willingly or not – all forms of thinking and reproduces codes, forms, ideas, rules, and commandments of the time, perhaps from time immemorial.

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The result in impact, size, and strength, in the completeness of these large woodcut matrices, is great. The signs, from the no-smoking or no-parking signs to the bar code, with their thin or thick lines, divide the spaces between reliefs, colors, other spellings / other words, something between the sung poem and the imponderable.

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Of course, we managed to make certain connections, comparisons, and interconnections to deal with Jair Correia's work. He currently works in different fields of expression, but with the ability to interact and interfere through them. Filmmaker and visual artist - like Peter Greenway and Tim Burton - can write a screenplay for a movie or adapt an important book for the cinema, for the simple reason that this will be the best way to express themselves about this book, to paint a picture or think a site specific. Ulysses, by James Joyce, Galvez, the Emperor of Acre, by Marcio de Souza orThe Metamorphosis, by Kafka may inspire an adaptation, a feasibility study,

a possible future project by quem 

knows Brazil and knows that it is not, nor was, nor will be the country of the future.

Or do we live in the country of the future?

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Returning to JC's seven wooden panels, with their reliefs and application of gold and annatto leaves, I look for a reference, a correlation, perhaps an artist to whom I can relate to him. Asked, he tells me he doesn't think, nor has any reference, simple as that. But I look for it because in my heart I feel something, some posture in the way he acts, in presenting his work, that reminds me of an artist that I have already contemplated in my wanderings. And one morning before delivering this text, I went to the library, looked around here and there, and discovered what my intuition pointed out: Hundertwasser, 'the painter-king of the five skins', according to the little

and beautiful volume is written by Pierre Restany.

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Jair Correia has nowhere near as many trips as this Viennese traveler, but there is something about him, between imagination and operation, that takes me to Hundertwasser.

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With a biography rich in accomplishments and relationships, Jair Correia talks about facts in his history that deserve to be highlighted. In the 1980s, when he was already working on his feature films, which won him some awards as a film director, he walked the streets working with the Tupinãodá group, even without being an effective member of the collective that brought together, among others, Jaime Prades, José Carratú, Ciro Cozzolino, Rui Amaral, Carlos Delfino. The group was responsible for a significant turning point in urban art, in street art in Brazil. This was confirmed to me by Jaime Prades, another artist who has been reflecting on contemporary art issues. At the time of the Tupinãodá, the use of unusual supports and materials was accentuated, following the previous experiences of Arte Povera, Lucio Fontana, and Transvanguarda.

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Another ally of Jair Correia, with whom he shared experiences and with whom he maintains friendship until today, is theater director Antunes Filho. In cinema, Jair Correia fell in the graces, still young, of the legendary critic Rubem Biáfora. Finally, as if that were not enough, he announces that he is going to New Zealand to visit and exchange information with director Peter Jackson, from the film Lord of the Rings, as it intends to develop know how to make your next film.

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In carrying out the works of 'Icons – Other Words', JC used materials with their own stories, with the feathers of time, such as demolition wood, carefully crafted to receive bas-relief drawings. In this bas-relief, gold leaf, silver, and annatto ink are applied, establishing organic tones and colors with a strong visual presence. They are works of generous size and format to provoke a certain impact. 'Outras Palavras', according to the artist, is “exactly this new way of understanding things written in a planetary way, the hieroglyph modern, used in consumption, in the circulation of the population, in the pulsation of planetary dynamics”.

 

The conversation with Jair Correia was so fluid during our meeting at Livraria da Vila, that we were still there until late at night, I was already asking for the first longnecks, and he exchanged them for long addictives and my daughter Paloma, with whom I had scheduled a dinner, arrived to participate in the conversation. It was great because I suggested that Jair make a summary of our almost four hours of conversation so that she could take a closer look at it. I started by asking him to show her,

the photos she had taken that day of her granddaughter who was just a few months old.

Then we would leave the bookshop for another bar, due to the time, and I would spend another two weeks maturing that pleasant Friday afternoon, the stories annotated or not, the memories of his work received via archives, such as old wooden blocks and gold,   as a sign and time capsules. 'The Power of Art', 'The Painter-King of the Five Skins.

Just like Jair Correia, Hundertwasser, now, does not leave my mind.

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PAULO KLEIN

Visual Arts critic and curator

ABCA – AICA5

08/27/2012

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1 - RESTANY Pierre – 'The Power of Art' HUDERTWASSER 'The Painter-King of the Five Skins' – Taschen 2002.

2 - VELOSO Caetano – Fragments of the lyrics of 'Outras Palavras'.

3 - With Donato Sartori, considered the main living mask maker in the western world, learned the methodology of making masks. He participated in the International Seminar on Masks, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1995, learning mask techniques in cartapesta. He learned leather mask techniques at the Seminario Laboratorio Internazionale, at the Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali, in Padova, Italy, in 1996 and 1998. He researched the history of this object and its influence on the trajectory of humanity and its complexities to execute the video documentary Voyage to the world of the mask (1999). In 2003, for his work in the show Auto da Barca do Inferno, he was nominated for the Brazilian Theater Shell Award in the Costume Design – Visual Conception and Masks category.

4 - Router – A board receives several types of materials to have the surface designed in low relief. It receives digitally drawn information and the tip of a drill cuts the wood.

5 - ABCA – Brazilian Association of Art Critics / AICA – International Association of Art Critics

Ícones - Outras Palavras

“It is on the other face of art that creators, inspired by multipurpose languages, take on the transversality of contemporary art messages and their growing integration into the existential dynamics of everyday life. Hunderwasser naturally has its place there, a unique place, sometimes apparently paradoxical in its unforeseen implications. But it corresponds to the internal logic of his humanist vision, made of naive generosity and practical instinct. This painter in love with beauty spends most of his time working as an architectural doctor, strongly recommending ecological temperance and hating the straight line as much as he hates the European Union”.  ¹

'neca of this sleep

never ever

never more

Brake, brake mom and dad

good soul

say crazy

 

I dye myself romantic

but i'm lazy

computer' ²

Icons - Other Words

11/14/2010 - 12/20/2010

MUSEUM OF ART OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

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03/14/2012 - 04/07/2012 

FAYGA OSTROWER GALLERY - FUNARTE CULTURAL COMPLEX - DF

2012 FUNARTE CONTEMPORARY ART PRIZE

Exposição Permanente UNAERP

Permanent Exhibition UNAERP

 

UP-DOWN AND OPEN-CLOSE

Dante Veloni

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Appropriating any object in common, everyday life simply means a subject taking possession of something that was not his property.

Appropriating any object in common, everyday life, with the aim of creating and producing art means an artist taking over the body and soul of that object, that is, in addition to incorporating the traditional meaning of the object, the artist adds poetic contents that transform this same object into a work of art.

 

There is a difference in the essence of these two attitudes of appropriation, where the posture of a subject is distinguished from the other by the quality of his desire exercised over the object.

The first posture causes an appropriated object to continue its already determined existence from its origin until the end of its useful cycle, where only its owner has changed. Therefore, a simple change in the subjective sense of possession, of ownership.

The second, makes the object appropriated by the artist have more than a simple change of ownership. The artist interacts with the object, giving it new formal and conceptual attributions. In this way, he transforms it into an aesthetic object that starts to have a new symbolic meaning and a new social function, endowed with the status of art.

                               

And it is the attentive and discerning look of the artist that points out and assigns, in a single gesture,

a new meaning to that obsolete object.

An old elevator door removed, deteriorated, and in disuse, which reaches the end of its mission of opening and closing space becomes raw material for an attentive artist in tune with his time and his art, exactly as the artist Jair Correia in this set of works he called Up To Date, which now becomes part of the collection of the University of Ribeirão Preto.

 

In a first and superficial look at the work of Jair Correia, we almost immediately go back to the ideas of the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, from the beginning of the 20th century, due to his historical quotations and his objects trouvès. However, this reference seems fragile,

anachronistic and distant.

 

Jair Correia was born under other signs, and, as an artist, he was formed in a context influenced by the post-war period, such as Pop, Neo-Dada, and Arte Povera of the 50s and 60s, with R. Rauschenberg, J. Johns or M. Pistoletto, who, despising the traditional supports of art, appropriated industrialized, bizarre and vulgar objects and transformed them

in art   (assemblages, interventions, and installations).

 

While the Dadaists, during the 1st World War and at the height of Modernism, acted in an exclusive way, denying the meaning of art in order to banish all artistic references from the past, post-2nd World War artists opened space for inclusion, that is, added new meanings to those inherent to the origin of the appropriated objects, bringing them immediately experienced contents and historical quotes from a near or remote past, which generated, from then on,

the use of the term Postmodern in the plastic arts.

 

Although Jair Correia is a descendant of this second artistic movement, it would not be the case, nor would it be convenient, for us to try to place his work in some “category” here, as we would run the risk of committing the mistake of exclusion and directing his work to what exactly he did not does: prevent the richness of the diversity of readings and the possibility of transit between an already known code, which is the object, to another to be known, which is his art.

He's a contemporary artist, and that's enough!

 

To the doors and elevators laden with inscriptions, drawings, and carvings made by users of an old hotel in Ribeirão Preto during its 60 years of operation, ranging from glamor to decadence, Jair Correia adds new poetic content to them, through his incisions and paintings, which metaphorize the ups and downs of people with the cultural diversity so different from those who passed by, opened and closed the doors. The one who, in the enclosure of the four walls of the elevator, left scars of his existence as a universal being.

Be it João, Pedro, or Antonio. Be it English, Tibetan, Egyptian, or Chinese.

 

There are two elevators, one called Expresso para o Céu

the other Express to Hell.

By Expresso para o Céu, those who consider themselves pure, chaste, just, and worthy go up. Down the Expressway to Hell descend those who do not consider themselves to be sinners, shameless, profane, and ashamed. In short, there is no difference between them.

 

In this way, just as Ezra Pound, Haroldo, or Augusto de Campos did, at first Jair Correia, as an author, translates the object he reads. In a second moment, as an actor, he interprets the object according to his consistent intellectual compilation.

At the same time that it appropriates, it responds and is imperative: Make It New!

   

In other words: in an instant, Jair Correia is a prospector, because in the mud he discovers mining. In another instant, he is Midas, where he touches...

​

May 2006

Permanent Exhibition UNAERP

AS OF MAY 2006

UNIVERSITY OF RIBEIRÃO PRETO

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