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As
I have already written previously, I have been expressing through
my works the daily subjects that afflict me conceptual and ideologically.
It was like this with the series "1984 - George Orwell's Stigma",
"Brave New World" and "Seattle Project", among other, where I used pieces of computers
and commonplace objects incorporated to the traditional technique
of oil painting. In that way, the reason of existence of this exhibition
could not be different.
Since the 80's, when analyzing the human attitudes in our time and
trying to understand its trajectory through comparisons with the past,
I came across to a strong parallel in history: the Middle Age. The
whole violence sense, insecurity, solitude, social despair, risks
of epidemics, religious control, professional relationships, space
displacement, the government's dependence, social injustices, personal
anguishes etc., that happen nowadays, have, in my point of view, certain
similarity with that historical period. From there it was born this
new series of works "Brave New Middleage", where the major intention
is to provoke, in the spectator, reflections on the present and future
using the experiences of the past in an approaching similar to the
cyclical continuum space time, although I imagine that the time should
not be represented exactly by a circle, but for a spiral (that has
some characteristic apparently cyclical), because it is born in a
point, it grows always passing by the same quadrants that provoke
certain similarities continually even so without repeating, being,
because of that, much more dynamics, as it is the life.
Returning to the historical parallel mentioned previously, we know
that in the Middle Age, the displacement of the people from an area
to another was very slow, because the faster mean of transportation
was accomplished through horses. Today the speed of the displacement
in the great cities arrives to the same parameters of the Middle Age
due to the traffic jam (inside of the cities, we delay the same time,
as in the pas t, to move ourselves 20 kilometers, for example).
With the progress of the computer science, many liberal professionals
and executives have been maintaining their offices at home and they
use electronic means to send their services to the companies. In the
same way, in the Middle Age, there were people that hired the artisans'
services leaving the raw material at their houses and periodically
passed in their homes to take the finished product. In the Middle
Age, there was also an informal structure of trade, and now, the informal
economy is coming strong in the great cities, where, many managers
take raw material and remove goods manufactured by people hired to
accomplish those services in its own houses.
In the Middle Age, the cities were surrounded by high walls and gates,
that were closed at night, in order to protect against external attacks.
Archers were put in those walls to watch possible enemies' approach.
As a parallel, we have today, closed condominiums or even commercial
and residential areas, where watchmen's companies are contracted with
the same formerly purpose. In the Middle Age, the roads were also
extremely dangerous as the crossings of streets are, in the great
cities nowadays.
The risk of serious epidemics is increasing in our days, worrying
the world sanitary authorities, due the facility which the viruses
and bacterias can be transmitted. This has been generating the same
concerns that there was in the Middle Age with the plagues.
As well as in the Middle Age, the cities today are true centers of
new ideas, technologies and power, where the rulers are generally
prepotents and stay isolated of the population that hopes the governors
solve the community's problems.
The labyrinthian formation of the streets in slums and poor areas
does not differ of the dwelling conditions in the Middle Age, where
the basic sanitation was precarious. Besides, the dissemination
and the manipulation of the religions today, has not been very different
from the religious manipulation of the Middle Age. In the same way,
the proximity of the end of the millennium has been creating some
catastrophic forecasts, similar to the one of the end of the first
millennium, associated to the of the end of the world.
However, the Middle Age was not exactly an era of obscurantism as
many think and, perhaps, our age is not also as black as some pessimists
divulge. In that sense, many believe that we are in the threshold
of a new age that, perhaps, do not delay the same time that Renaissance
delayed to arrive, since everything has been developing and modified
with extreme speed in our times (probably, it happened more significant
events in this century than in the whole history of the humanity).
With all this, the "New Middle Age" that we are living today, in spite
of its dichotomies, seems to me so admirable as the one lived by our
ancestors, and this encouraged me to continue expressing my disillusions
and hopes through the logical and joyful reutilization of technological
residues of our days opposed to representative elements of the Middle
Age.
When respecting, in the series Brave New Middle Age, the persistent
recurrence in the use of some symbolic elements, such as the image
of the planet Earth, seeds and leaves, as well as ballet dancers images,
used in another series of works, I try to express the situation of
the man's existential unbalance before the planet, nowadays, besides
creating an analogy, through the counterpoint, with elements that
refer to the Middle Age.
The constructivist composition of the pictures which begins with the
Golden Section used in its dimensions, generates the creation of pictorial
plans gotten through textures and overlays of paint in sneezed and
wrinkled layers, and abstract and gestured brushstrokes. Even so,
those rigid geometric plans are attenuated with the use of the elegant
and organic lines of the logarithmic spiral (for me associated to
the rhythm of the life and of the time) and with the use of chromatic
harmonies resultant of extensive research on the color and that help
the spectator to travel by the pictorial surface of each work.
The outcome, I believe, it is formed by non conventional contemporary
pictorial works, where the symbolic universe exercises great visual
force in the spectator.
October/1998
2002
Walter Miranda |
