Marcelo Monteiro combines the articulation of wood, its sculptural matrix, with expansive forms imbued with a restlessness that seem to be in disorder or insinuate unexpected contradictions. By arranging things between things, it places our perception at a crossroads; our gaze compresses and acquires a split visibility. It explores instability, limit situations, the tenuous balance that places us in a troubled territory, but reaffirms its visual force field.

 

The determining vector in his work process is to carve the wooden blocks and segment a common continent for the different elements that orbit around this raw material. An active field of experimentation permeated by ambiguities that align at the interface of the organicity of artisanal work and the industrial production process; This is how his works acquire consistency as a place of matter, of texture, of doing, of knowing, and at the same time, demarcates the tension between the dispersion and containment of its components.

 

Marcelo Monteiro initially experienced a period of figurative matrices that dissolved into the sculptural object through the densification of an abstract visual language, which opened up new possibilities for developing his work practice. The theme of nature is present in his imagination as a permanent question, always placing us before a consolidated dichotomy. It highlights the presence of manual skill, of being in contact with direct manipulation of organic materials and industrialized products, which permanently confront each other and indicate a desire to organize possible futures.

 

The heterogeneity of media and the combination of a wide range of objects take on ambiguous contours, explore tensions, reveal unforeseen developments, a split, dense, condensed visuality that, at times, exudes a tactile sensuality, through the nervous thickness of its undulations and cracks.

 

Fracture or split, plumb lines, gravitational saturations are added values to his works and orbit there with sharpness and precision. They seem to be going against the grain, bringing us closer or further away from something already configured, which in no way resembles the things they signify, creating a displacement of the senses. There is no room for improvisation, but they highlight the precariousness of our perceptual field by creating interruptions in the structure of their work. Their surfaces contain their own musculature, as if they were an underground palpitation. These works are impressive for the breadth of questions they present and place us in a field of concern. They carve out distinct, plural or possible worlds. And they bring to light how delicate and fragile the plot that establishes contradictory work relationships is and calls us to think about the historical precariousness of our existence.

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Vanda Klabin, curator