André Ricardo opens exhibition at the Iberê Foundation

This Saturday, the Iberê Camargo Foundation (avenida Padre Cacique, 2000) starts its exhibition calendar with the show Of the necessary painting, which brings together 56 works of art by São Paulo artist André Ricardo. Produced with egg tempera, which consists of mixing pigment with yolk, most of the works will be exhibited for the first time, including a small set of paintings produced in New York, in 2022. Thursday to Sunday, from 2 pm to 6 pm. On Thursdays, admission is free. From Friday to Sunday, tickets cost from R$10.00 and can be purchased at the box office.

Of the necessary painting invites us to think about the importance that art has for culture and for our construction as a society. The need for André’s painting lies in its potential to become a tool capable of, through art, facing our history, understanding our origins and exposing our contradictions. Art does not submit to a discourse or illustrate an idea, but grows up by becoming the very voice of the artist and the universe in which he lives.

The question is not in the theme, but in the way it is done. When art transcends the barriers of representation to become its own language that translates the artist’s experiences, it opens up the possibility of thinking about the world through another narrative. “When I look at a car and represent a car, when I represent the boat, I represent the snake, what unites everything is not exactly the meaning of the theme, but how this visuality makes me see the world”, reflects André. “That’s what interests me in speculating in each painting. It’s understanding what constitutes me as an inheritance of an Afro-Brazilian popular visual intelligence, through which I can represent anything.”

The artist’s works bring in the brushstrokes what André perceived of the world with his eyes. What hits his retina is reflected onto the screen, building a discourse, a language, a manifestation of his own – more than an impression of the object. Son of northeastern immigrants, who went to try life in São Paulo, André grew up on the outskirts of São Paulo. He practiced drawings during bus trips from Grajaú, a neighborhood in the south of the city, to USP, where he studied Visual Arts. The collective’s windows framed the city over which the artist gazed. Rectilinear facades, urban geometries, limiting contours, the colors of life: all this served as raw material for his art and is present in his paintings, building the language through which the artist gives voice to his world. “It’s a visuality that shapes our look. When we live with these forms, this visuality makes us look at the world in a very particular way”, he explains.

André’s artistic language has Brazilian roots, and the Latin universe that permeates him spills over into his canvases. The Latin American and Brazilian chromatic culture is extremely rich: in our fauna, flora, buildings, clothes, food – everything has color. And that’s why she became so important and present in André’s work. In order for color to appear in the paintings with the same vigor with which it surrounds us, the artist uses egg tempera. Widely used since the Middle Ages, the technique consists of using egg yolk as a binder to transform pure pigment into paint. By generating a very delicate film, this paint provides the color with a higher degree of purity and allows it to be more exposed to the air, intensifying the color.

Influenced by Alfredo Volpi, an Italian-Brazilian painter who made extensive use of ovo tempera, André found what he was looking for in the technique. “It both met my desire to expand the color very well, and brought a process to which I adapted well, because tempering requires an artisanal process to do it. It is a pre-industrial technique, before the tube of paint. The fact that me making my own paint gives me a much closer relationship with color.”

The quality of the tempera painting is very reminiscent of the colors of the popular facades of Brazilian architecture, and it is this affection that the artist seeks. “Tempera brings me an affective memory that interests me a lot. You know when you travel through interiors and see these little chapels? They are memories of a visuality that shapes us in some way”, comments André, “Color is a poetic gesture. When I think about color, I try to find the affective memory that connects me to this visuality that connects us with our roots, our Afro-Brazilian popular heritage.”

“Painting is a way to reveal things”, emphasizes André. But also to build the crossing between universes, from a peripheral narrative, which almost always stayed outside the museums. “Art creates a bridge between different social contexts. For me it was very important to see myself in the work and make my reality a fuel for my art to happen.”