m a t e u v e l a s c o
New York, 1980
m a t e u v e l a s c o
New York, 1980
under construction
Nova Iorque, USA - 1980
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Mateu Velasco graduated in Industrial Design at PUC-Rio in 2003 and has a Master’s degree in Graphic Design from the same university. He began working professionally as an illustrator in 1999. He expanded his performance by painting public murals in the early 2000’s, developing his own language as a visual artist,
Mateu’s art reveals a reality we don’t notice, activating our memory and sensibility through his critical and conceptual rhetoric. Filled with references of an urban routine, his works signify a pressing need to humanize the city. The artist’s work captures the spectator and transports him/her to a world of overlays and graphic cutouts, all whilst playing with elements of contemporaneity.
The result is an assemblage of fragments of memories that awaken our interest, affirming their ethereal nature.
Throughout this journey, he’s been collecting images from his daily life, transforming them into drawings, sketches, doodles and various graphics.
The junction of each fragment constitutes the guiding thread of his creative process, inviting the spectator to new possibilities of visual and poetic narratives.
installation
INSTALLATTION “A BIRD SINGING IN A CAGE IS DESCRIBING THE CLOUDS OUTSIDE”, 2022
A poem is something that evokes memories of real and imaginary things (…)
The things over the window ledge act like a poem.
They are images that reflect nothing (…)
I sing about the things over the window ledge.
(Jarkko Laine)
A BIRD SINGING IN A CAGE IS DESCRIBING THE CLOUDS OUTSIDE
I’m interested in the distracted reality of everyday life,
in the domestication of our abode in space
and of the landscapes that articulate our experience of time duration.
I'm interested in what may not be of interest.
We are what we remember being.
The reflection in the eyes that are reflected in the mirror.
The things that go by and are put away somewhere in the future,
right on the edge of what we can see……
Sartre would say that “paintings are windows to a whole world” because, by putting a strain on physical reality and expressive structures, they haunt our eyes.
However, our existential space is not a two-dimensional pictorial space. It’s necessary to be in the midst of things in order to impart meaning and significations to what we see; to transform chaos into a cosmos.
Our environments are gradually losing their material essence and becoming impregnated with their formal character. The shape of the environment that surrounds us defines the present time.
This series stemmed from a collection of fragments of the real world simulated by the virtual one. For the last couple of years, I've traveled long distances within Google Street View, collecting landscapes and memories flattened by the monitor's pixels. Using only construction material, I tried to take back what had been appropriated by virtual media. Plywood, floor paint or automotive paint, wall brushes. It’s as if to rebuild what had been taken away, it was necessary to build a tangible reality. The contrast of the black paint applied to the canvas’ white and flat surface encompasses the stillness of the void. Empty cans, remnants of art works and ordinary everyday objects. Rubble, leftovers and discards are on the fringes of functionality and aesthetics. What’s disposable is ephemeral in its form, but timeless in its matter. Wear and tear and decay are not generally deemed positive aspects of the timeless character that a work of art should have, as it defies the idea of duration. But how much time does time have, anyway?
MATEU VELASCO
works
"GAVETAS" SERIES
In the series “Gavetas” (“Drawers”), that articulates paper trimmings, photographs, cotton shreds and gelatine, Mateu mixes and repurposes objects accumulated by the collecting exercise that is the basis of his poetics, to create an authorial work. The malleable “drawers” deal with the unpredictable and, at any time the spectator moves, reveals infinite and imprecise compositions. As do memories. It is the multiple layers and permanence’s of the past that give thickness to the artist’s present.
