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The Americas Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Prints 2008 Selections for Exhibition |
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Gloomy Tropics Mårcio Pannunzio |
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| Artist's Statement | ||
The Grotesque in the Form of Miniature The prints of Márcio Pannunzio are based on five fundamental characteristics: the small size, the saturation of elements, the grotesque figures, the occult signification, and the emblematic situation. The small size, united to the saturation of elements, demanded redoubled attention, perceptive effort. All the prints of the artist are plenty of figures distributed in a small space. The spectator is been called then, to exercise one different look to that which the consumption society seduced us; it is quite different to the views that are shown to us by avenues outdoors, by television scenes, faces, and shopping products. And what could these miniatures, plenty of elements, offer to that one, which with attention investigated it? Not, certainly, the amène [affable] beauty of medieval illuminations. What we see here, on the other side, will be tortuous, anomalous, ugly faces and bodies. The lovers are old, the powerful man has muzzle, preys, mouth vulture; the architectural elements remind the scenery of an expressionist motion picture. To the spectator that agrees with one posture opposed to that suggested by the consumption universe, the print of Màrcio Pannunzio coherently offers the opposite to this universe. Nothing is placed there to relax the eyes. However, the grotesque present in Pannunzio’s print isn’t gratuitous. It isn’t a simple opposition to one aesthetic canon. Each of his figures has a precise, although occulted, signification. Thin arms interlace themselves, like tortuous lianes, hiding the gestures at a first examination. It will be necessary, then, to follow the way of these arms, to ascertain to whose body each hand is connected, to distinguish his body from her body. To disentangle threads. After all of this, what is given to the look? One scene, one episode, one pose. It is as if the monster inhabitants of these prints were caught in the act, at an exact moment, of a kiss, of a coition, of an assassination. Or, then, it is like they themselves had interrupted their activities at a moment, coming to a make a pose for the printmaker in guard. As to the pose made and the scene seen, they are always symbolic, emblematic. There is always one general situation of a particular scene: the nearness between love and death, lovers that destroy each other, sex and power, the slavery of the other. After approximating to the paper plenty of tortuous figures, the spectator finally must understand the scene offered to him. All of this work of interpretation will be doubly recompensed. At first, by the constructive accuracy itself that made the interpretation work possible. The labyrinths of forms always have one exit. We can’t experience the difficulty to find the way out of it without admiring the ability of who had built it. At second, we are recompensed by the power of sense that emerges of each symbol. In most cases, this power comes from an abrupt inversion. Love isn’t sublime, but tragic, corrosive; sex already isn’t pleasure, but domination, expression of power, the nice girl doesn’t dance at broadcast television, but she dances among a lot of trash; the beggar, plenty of hurts, dissolves himself of pleasure to ejaculate in the dog’s mouth. One print, finally, that definitely doesn’t serve to embellish walls, but can provide to whom wants to see it, one unique experience of the context of ones life so enslaved to the standards and urgencies as ours.
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| Bio | ||
Màrcio Pannunzio was born in Casa Branca, São Paulo, Brasil, in 1958. Education 2008 2007
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Copyright © 2008 The Americas Biennial Exhibtion