"I’d rather be

this walking metamorphosis,

than having the same old opinion

about everything"

Raul Seixas

 

Metamorphosis, process in which something changes its form, a kind of

improvement or even evolution, demands a period of resting, contemplation.

When Toz named the following Art Exhibition – Metamorphosis

–, he definitely wanted to go beyond the night time to daytime changes,

from darkness to light and colors. Insomnia and the Joy Seller tell us

much more than this. They show us, as well as in Kafka, solitude and

searching, but also euphoria and freedom. We need the night to provide

the day. We need an intermediate period so we can accomplish

the beauty of the transformation, this metamorphosis that happens in

the cocoon’s time.

Insomnia was made to tell us about the nights without sleeping, about

the creatures that live at night time when everything is dark. Two years

later, Toz astonished us with the Joy Seller, the excessive use of colors

and the lightness of gas balloons. It was the ideal time to the mutation,

so this metamorphosis could lead us to multiple interpretations.

As Rosalind Krauss says, the art fields were amplified. There are no more

places to isolated definitions that set the different types of artistic creation.

At the walls of the city or at canvas, Toz’s work is easily identified by his

strong style, by his vibrant colors. What is behind the paints is definitely

what will interest the observer’s sensitive gaze. We can find the souls’

feelings, moments in which every human being undergoes that reflect

in his piece of art. Therefore, they are universal. His characters express

themselves in a different language, that one that can be noticed by looking

at, but it can be really understood only by the inner self of each one.

Toz, as a contemporary artist, supports the investigation, going to extreme

limits to express himself. Consequently, he achieves subtly the

eternal child that lives inside of us.

 

Isabel Portella

 

Isabel Maria Carneiro de Sanson Portella – Museologist and art critic, MSc and PhD

in History and Critical Art from Escola de Belas-Artes/UFRJ, expert in Art History and

Brazil’s Architecture from PUC-Rio, Archive Researcher and Galeria do Lago – Arte

Contemporânea’s Coordinator from Museu da República/IBRAM/MinC.