Odires Mlászho often works on the borderline between the visual arts and poetry. The artist’s investigation largely seeks to understand where these two fields touch one another. One of the main foci of his research, therefore, is articulated around the graphic dimension of the written word as an image. The overlaying of writing systems, alphabets and languages, and the equipment developed to record and print these systems are tools in the production of his work. Sometimes, Odires constructs artworks around the spatialization of the construction of poems, with their fullnesses, voids and structures.

This sort of borderline investigation has led the artist to explore the threshold between the bi-and tridimensional planes, as we see in some of his works such as “Bauhausmachine”, 2007. It was based on this clashing that Mlászho began to develop works using the technique that he calls “altered books,” where the writing gives way to the body of the book that holds it, in order to generate constructions that are built around the writing’s shell. The altered books point to the physical presence stemming from their own bidimensional counterpoint. But the writing that pours from Odire’s production is what the artist calls “proto-writing,” or writing diluted before its syntactic materialization. This is a totally incoherent writing, like a “babbling,” as the artist himself has described it. The linguistic elements are there, but they do not belong to any lexicon or syntax.

In “Arquibabas: Babas Geométricas” [Archdribbles: Geometric Dribbles] what we see are the ideal wrappers for the artist’s “writings.” The neverbefore-shown series of the same name, from 2015, is articulated around procedures that Mlászho carries out on book covers. They are interventions made with die cutters, peelings and sublimations that are also traces of the content that might be held within those covers. We only see excessively colored geometric annunciations. The dribbles suggested by Odires could be read as sly devices, traps, or as verbiage dripping with cunning and artifice. The abundance of “Arquibabas” presented reinforces this sort of rhetorical effort indicated by the aforementioned “babblings.”

The excessiveness could refer to the deficiency of language observed by Mlászho. It is not, however, a dismissal of the immensity of the semantic universe; rather, the aim is to qualify the artist’s passion for an approach to text through visual art, the word reassumed as image.

Edgard de Souza juxtaposes artworks that seem contrary in his production. Striking characteristics in his work – the duality between an intimate space of investigation and a work aimed at the public, as well as the virtuosity in the production of his tridimensional pieces – are present in his first solo show at Galeria Vermelho.

On the one hand, Edgard de Souza clearly evidences his virtuosity in the construction of sculptures, such as the works “Autofagia II” [Autophagia II], 2015, which involves a mirrored figure, a constant in his oeuvre, and “Acaso (hélice)” [Random (Helix)] and ‘Acaso (Saci)” [Random (Saci)], both from 2015, where the act of eating one’s own flesh (as indicated by the title of the aforementioned sculpture, “Autofagia”) appears amplified. “Autofagia II” is the largest and most intricate bronze sculpture ever produced by the artist. The two bodies that intercross each other are no longer symmetric; they seem to be engaged in a struggle where only one will survive, in an amalgam between lasciviousness and fighting. On the other hand, in the drawings of the “Rabisco” [Doodle] series from 2015, the artist shows us a new territory of his self-devouring clash. At first sight, the drawings in ballpoint pen on paper look like random childish scrawls and scribbles.

They are, however, the result of a recurrent procedure in the artist’s work, like the self-portraits in Cibachrome made in the late 1990s. The photographs from that period seem to serve as an exploration of his own body for the development of his sculptures, as well as a knot made with his own work – once again, the self-devouring.

Those self-portraits, published by the Edições Tijuana label in the format of an artist’s book, are being released simultaneously with the opening of the exhibition and provide a look at the artist’s first rudimentary studies in the use of a fax machine to combine images.

Somewhat like the procedure in the photographs, the “Rabiscos” record movements by Edgard de Souza. They are drawings made during simple challenges: drawing while dancing, while talking on the phone, using two hands at the same time, using the pen until it runs out of ink, being symmetric, avoiding symmetry. Each of these tasks gives rise to a graphically or materially different drawing that is imposed on the paper in a different way. They are nevertheless struggles and analyses of his body, which seems to be present in each of them. Sometimes, the effort expended in the application of the body on the paper is so great that the pigmentation of the ink blends with the grooves made by the repetitive movement and winds up composing surfaces with skin like characteristics.

In “Restauro” [Restoration], 2015, the artist restores an old and torn floorcloth, sewing it by hand, giving life to a dead object. The movement is opposite to that of the “Rabiscos”: returning the cloth to its original form, though steeped in the artist’s constructive skill.

In the “Conforto” [Comfort] series, produced between 2013 and 2015, Edgard displaces cushions that seem to have come from chairs and which should offer a sense of coziness and well-being to the sculpture. Besides having their positions displaced, the cushions have been deformed to resemble something halfway between safe, protective seashells and stark, disarranged shapes.

Edgard de Souza’s comfort seems to lie in this terrain between absolutely controlled virtuosity and the lack of control that moves his production forward.

In the catalogue of the artist’s panoramic exhibition at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in 2004, critic and curator Lisette Lagnado wrote that “If we take as an existential paradigm that Edgard de Souza began to produce in a period marked by ‘fear,’ we will inevitably observe a withdraw to an inner place.” Lagnado is referring to the appearance of AIDS and the subsequent sickness of some people who surrounded the artist in the 1980s. The appearance of the disease offset the young effervescence of that time. A clashing arose between the equally intense drives of wildness and shelter, and between rationality and barbarity.

This dualness has been visible in Edgard’s production since his first sculptures constructed as anamorphic furniture-animals in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In those works, legs of furniture pieces such as bedside tables and armchairs, made for purposes of solidity or rest, are crowned by organic shapes made with the skins of animals such as cows, zebras or snakes that form holes or distorted phalluses, or resemble horses ready to be mounted. They are rest and restlessness rolled into one.

The duel is enlarged by the mirrored figures in Edgard de Souza’s production, like the “Sem título” bench from 1990, the “Sem título” chair from 1997, the “Sem título” bronze sculpture from 1997, and “Autofagia I” from 2013. In these pieces, the two elements of the dual are equal and seem to be eating one another, as suggested by the title of the most recent piece. As in the cellular process of the same name, the sculptures seem to be ingesting themselves in a process that involves death and life at one and the same moment.

In the work of Nelson Leirner everything returns, but in a renewed and digested – duly translated – way. A reader of others and of himself, Nelson always returns to canonic works, either from the history of art or more contemporary ones, but he imparts to them his own ironic, critical, affective and iconoclastic view, always with beautiful lines, materials and colors that he remakes, invents and adds.

The aim of this exhibition is, therefore, to treat on Nelson Leirner’s creative process based on an unusual “angle.” Instead of making a reading that is chronological and serial – or even progressive – the idea is to recover the artist’s work based on a nearly circular perspective. “Nelson Leirner, a reader of others and of himself.”

A known facet of Leirner’s work is that he selects artists – such as Leonardo da Vinci, Diego Velázquez, L. Fontana, Mondrian, Duchamp, and many others – to serve as metaphors or pretexts. These artists return in his work, however, in an altered way and are shown based on a wide range of situations.

It is as though Nelson had talked with them and, in light of the dialogue he established, had taken a fresh look at his own self and his own art, and found them strange. Always resorting to an unexpected and often ironic sampling, Leirner revisits different artists and artworks, though ultimately always following a narrative that is uniquely his own. It is possible to perceive in his oeuvre a constant thread of continuous, coherent and persistent criticism of the art market along with the firmly established formulas it creates. The artists deified by the media certainly do not escape from the artist’s critical eye. Thus, Mona Lisa can appear in a hat and sunglasses; Hirst’s colored balls arise in embroidery; Velázquez’s girls are surprised by a swarm of flies; Fontana’s slits appear as zippers, which – very practically – can be opened but also closed.

Moreover, it is possible to tell a history of art, through the original way that Leirner makes art out of “itself,” taking as his basis his own gaze directed at the “other.” That is, producing a project that is uniquely his own, though based on his translation of others.

We know that nothing exists in this world in isolation, closed off from everything else, in a “purely original” state. And Nelson widens the gap and intensifies the uneasiness by showing how art has always been made, as it continues to be made today, through reference, inference, reading and translation.

As Lampedusa stated, every “translator is a traitor” – Traduttore, Traditore – and in this case of ours it is no different. Nelson Leirner makes “his” art both an homage and a far-reaching critique, insofar as it is accompanied by other works and repertoires that constitute his (and our) visual imagination. We think by “convention” and on the basis of previously selected images. What Nelson does is to expose his convention and play with it.

The result is a true dialogued vocabulary of art, which takes Nelson Leirner’s work as its straightedge and compass.

The members of this group have a lot in common. Besides being close friends, they talk with one another on a regular basis, since they all shared the same studio in São Paulo’s Belenzinho District. The choice of this district is significant insofar as it has played an essential role in the city’s history. The process of industrialization that made São Paulo State a hub of manufacturing began there, with glass and textile factories. It was also the location of the historical Vila Maria Zélia, the first worker’s villa in Brazil. The set of houses and the factory that make up the villa were built by Jorge Luis Street, between 1912 in 1916, to hold the Companhia Nacional de Tecidos de Juta [National Jute Fabrics Company] and dwellings for its workers. In 1931, the factory and villa were transferred to the federal government, which converted the industrial park into a prison for the Estado Novo [New State]. Since many political prisoners, including leftist intellectuals, were held there, the prison came to be nicknamed Universidade Maria Zélia [Maria Zélia University]. It is noteworthy how the same district has constituted different faces of the city of São Paulo’s progressivist process: spanning from the beginning of large-scale production, which ushered in a boom of wealth and urban growth, to the detention of political prisoners during a military dictatorship. These paths are linked with trends of the modernist movements, whose agendas included the investigation of mechanics aimed at forming a strong national identity.

It is not by chance, therefore, that the outlook of these artists is focused on the observation and criticism of different characteristics of social development. And there is a reason why they have settled their practice in a region strongly marked by our society’s history. Perhaps the common poetic thread of these five artists is their intense awareness and observation of their surroundings. Some of them investigate and criticize the development of our state through formative characteristics, while others challenge us to look at seemingly insignificant everyday things that turn out to be structurally complex.

The focus on these issues can possibly generate a poetics that is not necessarily articulated around an aesthetic delight, but rather finds the beauty in commonplace, discarded objects that are appropriated and re-signified, and which bear traces of their place of origin. It is perhaps a response to the modernist sterility, a formative element of our identity, which leads their works to deal with filth. But we are not (necessarily) talking about a grimy sort of filth, but rather a clever artifice that is instated atop everyday situations, which can allow us to understand an aspect of the world in another way. A vile act that qualifies or “dis-(re)qualifies” the routine of art or of life.