Memento Vivere
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Marcelo Campos | 2023
We are alive. This is a declaration that we need to celebrate, repeat, become conscious of, and thereby, act responsibly. To declare life is also to be mindful of ensuring life, our own and that of others us, a central matter in discussions about biopower and biopolitics. The politics of life today has now become central in philosophy, sociocultural discourse, and even art. Cristina Canale declares life, echoing the sentiment of Carlos Drummond de Andrade who, affected by the curtailment of freedom during Brazil’s military dictatorship, encouraged us to say, “the days are beautiful!”. Drummond, who trailed the crooked angels and the obstacles along his path in his poetry, positioned himself astounded by his very state of bewilderment in the face of the world.
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“Memento Vivere,” the title chosen by Cristina Canale for this exhibition, takes us back to the history of art, as the term memento mori was often used to remind us of our finite nature, depicted in still-life paintings, through the depiction of skulls [vanitas] which symbolized death. On the other hand, for a painter to declare life today redefines interests and perspectives that diverge from the hedonistic tendencies that are associated with artistic creation, often steeped in a sense of alienation. What can art do in the face of the world’s sorrows, in the face of life?
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To contemplate painting and still remain attentive to the world is, in a way, to solve perplexities, much like Drummond proposed. And with that, to react, experiment, take risks alongside the life of forms and materials, pay heed to metamorphoses, threats, and changes.
In Canale’s current series, the presence of portraiture is prominent. In a world full of self-portraits (selfies), the artist does not highlight the portrait that identifies specific individuals, but rather the construction, framing, and representation of the human figure that transforms, dissolves, and gradually divides into shoulders and necks, culminating in the oval shape of a face. By not identifying specific figures, we inevitably grasp the allegorical relationship these images provoke us to associate with. These could be seen as allegorical paintings, constructed by the artist who further magnifies this interest by incorporating elements external to the noble canvas of painting. Within the works, landscapes, nature, and plant elements coexist with the spreading of paints, forming fields of color that both distance themselves from and approach the mechanisms of representation. These gestures grant Canale’s work a broad range of experiments with abstract interests that now influence a part of contemporary art.
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Perhaps the term “image” is frowned upon the narratives of Brazilian painting history. With 40 years of artistic practice, Cristina Canale experienced the disputes over the relationship between painting and representation in Brazil from the inclination towards abstract forms, led by Constructivist perspectives, to the use of less noble materials, then termed as “popular”. Today, the artist challenges us with the question: “What truly matters in an image?” The world continued to popularize them, forging connections between the avant-garde and kitsch, between identity constructions, celebrations, carnivals and the salons of the elite. Yet, Brazil’s vitality never remained silent.
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In Canale’s work, a broader perspective reinforces the sharing of common interests within an art moment where art materials cease to belong to the components of conventional techniques, such as painting and drawing, and begin to border on a complete freedom of appropriating fabrics and inexpensive objects, like those sold in the popular markets of various cities.
Upon listening to the artist’s current interests, the friction between painting and gesture becomes evident. We perceive, in a different light, an attraction to the notion of harnessing the attained freedom, experimenting with collages, fostering a certain mismatch in reactions and encounters among materials layered onto the painting canvases. And thus, this draws attention to the friction, the irritations. By creating such disturbances, Canale embraces “a slight ambition for three-dimensionality”, in the artist’s words, creating certain reliefs on the flatness of the painting surface. Consequently, the pursuit of materials intertwines with the routines of life. Methods that have become historical in her production, like the use of torn silk stockings, glued cardboard and tapestries, continue to evolve. Today, Cristina shows interest in emphasizing the fabric itself, with striped areas, spheres, textures, and patterns, without the intervention of painting.
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Rather than encountering obstacles on the path, she forges them, and produces them, questioning the very primacy of the canvas, the nobility of categories. “Which fabric will be there in the background?”, the artist asks herself as she begins the provocation for the primordial gesture. A myth traverses Cristina Canale’s recent series. Danae, a princess who shared the love of Zeus and was impregnated by him through a golden rain. In the paintings of this exhibition, the presence of blue and gold aligns with both the myth and Danae’s pleasure. The pleasure that, rather thana small death, becomes a declaration of life and freedom. “Your shoulders bear the world, and it weighs no more than a child’s hand”, thus, Drummond proves to us that life will go on.
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Text originally written on the occasion of the solo exhibition “Memento Vivere,” Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, 2023.
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