BROTA

With Carlos Dias

On view at Gruta, 449 rua Vitorino Carmilo, Santa Cecilia, São Paulo, Brazil from May 19th until May 28th 2022

BROTA (sprout), Carlos Dias´ solo show at the independent space Gruta, presents the artist´s recent production, which could be seen as a personal cutout of the image library of the living world in its broader sense: vegetal, animal, human; maybe even ethereal...

From simple shapes, essentially the circle, the artist constructs elements of a singular vocabulary, elaborating a complex personal mythology, as well as subjective compositions that reflect the perceptions and images, visible or invisible, which reach his sensitive field.

In an attempt to understand the world, he reveals essentially a portrait of his life experiences and emotions, capturing them in a macroscopic and/or microscopic manner, according to the scale of the painting. He proceeds like this, from a panoramic vision, organized as a Dadaist collage, to an amplification of simple elements selected from his repertoire. What we see here could be an internal chaos of his own making, a simple fruit, or even the entrance to a meditative portal or to a distant galaxy.

Carlos Dias processes the world, gobbling it up until he merges with what he´s observing, regurgitating colors and forms. The artist suspends time and somehow erases his own idiosyncrasies to come closer to the lost childhood spontaneity, which we lose when we believe we can´t draw or paint something just because it doesn´t exist. Because the product of the imagination is as tangible as the real thing, it can live on paper or on canvas, even if its bi-dimensional equivalent reveals a different aura or presence.

Like this, the artist´s production reflects an intuitive vision also marked by a very personal color palette, which he creates by layering hues and textures, like a mental and sensitive roadmap of emotions.

Through a simple pictorial vocabulary, he seems to emphasize the formal as much as the chromatic essence of things, just as if he was reproducing the fugitive images and mutable contours that surge when we try to see behind closed eyelids.

In this way, Carlos Dias ‘artistic practice could compare to a kind of dive, an introspective travel searching for a synthesis in harmony with the indefinite image canalized and expressed in reach of some sort of peace, a cure of the soul. This could be compared to stem cell science, which embodies the promise of treatment for the most various of illnesses; before becoming skin, bones, or organs. A cure through essence and the arts.

Self-taught artist and musician, Carlos Dias is multi-faceted. He produces and accumulates pieces of a puzzle, in which each element is a fragment of a unique vocabulary. He focuses on doing, playing, experimenting, often collectively. Creating or composing with friends, drawing blindfolded, with both hands or without taking the pen from the paper; the artist lets go of the result, leaving the body and the unconsciousness, bringing forth the creative outcome. Embracing and searching for the error and the uncanny, his approach can be approximated to the surrealist vision, to automatic drawing and the cadavres exquis.

It´s in this improvised magic, this place without defined borders or time, where everything is the same thing, as well as a source of energy and cure, that Carlos Dias´art is elaborated. The artist´s imagination as a channel generating images is sufficient to give birth to ideas, shapes and colors, thus leaving images sprouting in the world.

CARLOS DIAS  (Porto Alegre, 1975, lives and works in São Paulo)

Self-taught artist and musician, Carlos Dias is a multimedia artist. From his experience as a musician in bands such as Againe, Polara or Caxabaxa and collaborations with CPM22 or Cansei de Ser Sexy, he transposed an interest for the experimental and the collective into his visual art practice. Marked by a strong gestural painting, his artistic research dialogues with subculture´s aesthetics, automatic drawing, popular art, pop culture and historical or contemporary art references. Among his shows, one can highlight: 2022, BROTA – Solo show, GRUTA; 2018/ JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, COLEÇÃO MUGRABI – Group show, CCBB, São Paulo, Brazil; 2015/ AVOLVER – Solo show, acervo Galeria Península, Porto Alegre, Brazil; 2014/ Acessos – Solo show, Galeria Logo, São Paulo, ; 2013/ Um paço ao seu alcance - Retrospective, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil; 2012/ Outro Plano – solo show, Choque Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; 2011/ Além – solo show, Choque cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; 2009/ Pra Não Levitar – solo show, Choque cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; 2009/ De dentro pra fora/ De fora pra dentro – group show, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil; 2009/ Scion presents: São Paulo – Group show, Scion Center, Los Angeles, USA; 2008/ Transfer – group show, Santander Cultural, Porto Alegre; 2007/ Cor da Rua - Coletiva, O'contemporary Gallery, Brighton, UK; 2006/ Spray, o novo muralismo – Group show, Memorial da America Latina, São Paulo, Brazil.