So, Tink is working for an ad film company (she usually does the casting...) and they're researching stuff for a new Coke comercial. Supposed to be an underwater thing, with mermaids and surfers and all. So they called her to test some of the make-up they'll use on the mermaids, since the actresses had to be rehearsing the underwater choreography or something. Then, just last night, she surprised me by coming over from the place where they were doing the tests. I didn't notice at first due to the poor lightling in the hall, but part of her was covered in some silvery paint! But that's not all of it. Making sure my parents weren't around, she carefuly lifted up her shirt. Not only was her entile ab covered in silver paint, but they had concealed her nipples with some sort of latex thingy! The volume of the breasts was decorated with what looked like coral or scales. All done in latex. Very interesting, not to say strangely enticing. She went home with that still on her: she was supposed to sleep with it, to test if the actresses can stay with it all along the shooting of the comercial. It'll save them the long hours it would take to do it all over every day.

Groovy...

About the trip to Italy
I spent the semester taking care of all the details: from passports to crash-courses in italian. My part of the deal was done. And the, last night, mom and dad sat down with me and old me the obvious: it`s too expensive to send me to Europe at the present time. Right... At least mom can`t brag about my not doing anything about it...
So we started searching for other, cheaper possibilities. The asked me what kind of course I was looking for, be it in arts or advertising, and we searched the web for something related. Eventually, I found an interesting ad-related course: art direction with the Miami Ad School. They have courses in many different cities, ranging from San Francisco (and then I thought: Aerandir!!!) to.... my home town!! Cool... So this means I`ll probably be taking the course right here. Anyhow, mom still wants me to travel, to see the world. It`s ironic: most moms freak out when their children talk about traveling. And at the rate things are going, I`m probably just going to travel the US, without any course as an objective.

Arrivederci, Italia.
Howdy, USA...

Festinha de aniversário na casa da Lola, uma criança linda do curso de publicidade.
Preciso confessar que eu tava mesmo precisando dessas coisas. Precisava conversar com gente nova, fazer aquele meu papel de artista plástico intelectual, me conectar mesmo com pessoas fora da minha rotina. Me sociabilizar. E depois cair na farra, no techno ou qualquer outra coisa que estivesse tocando. Parecer idiota.
Ultimamente a rotina não tem permitido isso. Até os finais de semana são repletos dessas coisas da vida das quais temos que cuidar.

Conversei muito com a mãe dela, que também se formou em artes plásticas pela Fundação. É estranho... Há um mar de gente. Neste mar de gente, você tem que descobrir um punhado de pessoas que se dediquem à arte. Mas não é só isso: desse punhado, você tem que escolher a dedo aqueles que encaram a vida do mesmo jeito. Senão fica cada um tentando convencer o outro de que sua visão de mundo é melhor... A mãe dela esbarrou nessa última seleção.
No mais, fiquei vendo. Vendo um casalzinho dançar forró como se fosse a nossa versão do tango argentino. Lindos. E o pai divorciado da Lola aparentar ciúmes de mim. E os rapazes fazerem insinuações tolas. E muita gente linda como eu tinha saudades de ver. Me aproximei bastante dessa turma hoje. Que bom.

Preciso dar um gás na minha vida social esquecida.

"What is out there?" she asked
"The vast human stupidity" was all that Worth could answer...




Continuing my weekend movie rampage, I've rented Cube, as once suggested by Makel. I'll admit I wasn't too hopeful about this one and was frankly looking fore something more challenging to the mind. Boy, was I in for a surprise!
In a nutshell, the movie brings six characters who never met before trapped in a math-based prision that consists of thousands of cubic rooms put toghether. Some have traps, others don't. And they'll have to cooperate to get out. But that's not all of it. There are other variables. But I don't want to spoil your surprise. Watch the movie!

Highlights:
To start, let's talk about the production. I've never seen such a brilliantly simple production. Since all the thousands of rooms look alike (except for the color of the lighting), all they needed were four rooms to shoot the whole thing. Imagine this: there's the room where the actors are, one above them, one below them, and one on the sides, which could be used as any of the four rooms on the side of the one they currently stand. Aside from that, there's a few obviously computer generated backgrounds when they leave the cube. Deviously simple.
Now, to deal with the plot. I figured there's some reference to reality shows in the whole thing, but above all, I couldn't help remembering my dearest friend Jean Paul Sartre! I mean, people who've never seen each other having to cooperate to coexist!! It's a clear reference. And plus, the plot offers us no reason for those people to be there. Nor any record of how they got there in the first place. It doesn't even show you what's outside the prision! Can it get any closer to existentialism than this? No bigger meanings, no reason, no punishment for your actions. Just the here and now.

I miss my days of rehearsing for Huis Clos...

É que, eu não achava que fosse acontecer, mas de repente a minha vida virou esse trabalho de graduação enorme. E eu estou aqui com trinta mil planos de coisas interessantes, passeios, surpresinhas a dois e estratégias de carreira; tudo esperando esse maldito trabalho terminar. Eu estou me divertindo horrores fazendo esse trabalho, mesmo com toda a pressão, stress, datas e TPMs de namorada. Mas sabe quando, por mais divertido que seja algo, você quer dar um tempo e fazer outra coisa? Me sinto como se estivesse jogando um jogo incrível, e ao mesmo tempo o sol lá fora estivesse me chamando para ir à piscina. Comparação péssima, eu sei. Mas é mais ou menos isso. Morro de ansiedade para começar o ano que vem. Desse jeito, duvido que eu aproveite minhas férias.

Bom... tudo que eu podia produzir para o trabalho de graduação já foi produzido. Com excessão de duas pinturas que ainda estão em produção e a nova versão da Lioness que eu estou acabando. Mas acho que parei por aqui. Serão cerca de dez pinturas. As últimas, obviamente, acabaram sendo as melhores.
O fato é que tenho menos de um mês para entregar tudo: pinturas, texto escrito e encadernado, e minha alma nas mãos da banca de graduação.
Vou passar estes últimos dias que faltam escrevendo os textos todos e fazendo o fine-tuning do que já foi feito (limpando, imprimindo o Rafaella.jpg, corrigindo algumas coisinhas aqui e ali, deixando tudo perfeito na medida do possível).
Estive lendo os meus cadernos dos anos anteriores para pegar algumas anotações para os textos. Tem tanta coisa que eu queria fazer e acabei não fazendo. Imagine que eu quis retratar meu pai. E meu irmão também. Teria sido uma experiência legal. Mas acho que essa história toda dos retratos não acabou ainda. Vou fazer mais alguns no ano que vem, mas já me decidi que o ano seguinte será dedicado a pinturas de temas clássicos, como foi a Virgem e o Menino. A Crucificação, David e Golias, a Anunciação, Vênus. Essas coisas.

Me diverti muito nesse curso. E ano que vem a vida começa de verdade.

So... Can you see the images now??

Makel:

I argued much with Tinkerbell in order to to do this one. It was the first portrait in which I painted a background (Jeez, that was tough!).

I'll start with the subjective context. When we were toghether, me and Makel, we loved to go over to this pizza restaurant in the city where she lived. It was great pizza at low prices. The place, with it's huge windows and open space, seemed to remind me of Hopper's Chop Suey painting when the four o'clock sun hit the windows. Nowadays, when I remember Makel, I can't avoid picuring her in that place, smiling at me and chatting about all the pointless philosophy we used to talk about. Happy moments amidst all the arguing we did.
Of course, reality was a whole different thing. She no longer dressed like that, or had time to go to that place again. She was now a busy law student who was also taking care of her soon-to-be fiancée. So I had to meet her somewhere, photograph her, then ride to her city to photograph the restaurant. All that coupled with the fact that I wasn't painting in canvas. But that's a more technical side. I'll explain.

I wanted to paint a portrait to explicit how we view images. The difference between figure and background. Makel was painted in two layers of acrylic. On one layer, I painted the restaurant, minus our table and the area that would be accupied by her. These would go on the other layer. See, we usually tell foreground from background throught perspective (be it geometric or atmospheric) and by logicaly understanding wich layer is on top. Confused? Take a look at this painting by Malevich. How do you know the yellow figure is in front of the red line? It's a layer on top of another layer.
When I separated foreground and background, this whole experience grew stronger. This painting has an amazing depth. First, because even though at first you cannot consciously notice the two layers of acrylic, your eye notices a difference. And it brings the first layer forward. Also, the first acrylic adds a haze to the second layer, like a fog, turning pure black into a grayish thing. That's atmospheric perspective (See Da Vinci's paintings....). Finally, Makel's image is in perfect focus, while the background is a little fuzzy. That's what happens in the human eye: you can't focus everything at once (this comes from my photography lessons at the advertising course: thanks, Luli!).

Quite frankly, I don't think I'll paint anything this enticing in the next two months...

Methodless:




I usually help Methodless with her work, taking some of the photographs or recording performances on tape. There was this one photo where she hung a canvas on the wall, flooded it with white acrylic paint and sat under it, while it dripped all over her. It turned out to be a very nice picture. And one that has been presented on two or three occasions in which she was called to expose her work. After the photo was taken, she had no more need for that canvas, and I asked her to give it to me. I removed the excess paint and waited for it to dry. Still, there was yet to come an image of her that would inspire me to paint. It took a year, but eventually I found one of her photos that was just right. It matched with a few idea I had. When I saw this picture of her face with that yellow rectangle painted on it, I remembered notes and sketches I had done on my notebooks about the transparency of oils. Things that I had learned from Tink's portrait. When I painted this one, I painted the yellow rectangle first. After it had dried, I painted over it Methodless' face with a paint that was so diluted, it almost didn't change the yellow beneath it.
Using oils over acrylics was a new discovery. After the acrylic had dried up, it had made the canvas' surface very irregular. I used sand paper to correct this. As a result, the oil acumulated on the scratches, creating lines that resembled scratches in old photos. A nice effect. Also, the brush ran smoother on this new surface than it did on regular canvas.

I know there are no great experiments in this one. No great philosophy. But sometimes you have to do the simple stuff to learn the lessons that'll lead you to the great stuff. Of course, one question does spring to mind: If it's her canvas, her photo and in part her paint, how much of this work actualy belongs to me?

New batch of portraits!!
As you've probably read, I've been working my ass of this semester for my graduation in the art course. Up 'till now, I've managed five portraits in three months. A record. Not to mention the fact that I've done in one year more than I did the last three years put toghether. That's what happens when you got a deadline. Anyway, I'm posting the latest portraits. Two of them won't be in the final project, so I won't even post them here.

To start, I've repainted the Blonde Muse:


Did her in acrylics. The original version was a mess of oils and acrylics that made the hole thing look dirty as hell. Besides, acording to what I wrote about acrilycs when I painted the Fairy, she was supposed to be painted only in acrylics because she was only an aquaintance, not an actual close friend.

More portraits to be posted later...

An artistic dilema:

My works cost resources to be made. Specifically money and time. Likewise, decent personal growth also costs money and time. I want to travel the country, meet new people, see new places. Yes, I know there's much to be done in the city as well, and I will try it also.
In a utopic scenario, I could spend one week producing and one week traveling, observing, being inspired. But alas, for the time being, I have a deadline. And I must produce non-stop until November 21st. Which means that I have little more than a month to produce my last three paintings for the graduation project. All my resources (extra bucks and time) should be focused on it.
But I'm straying from the point: the thing is, an artist must learn to balance production and inspiration. Form and content.

And I've been feeling hollow lately....

Uma vez eu falei para alguém que a vida funciona como uma espécie de pêndulo. Coisa bem esquizótipa mesmo: o tempo que é ruim será compensado por um proporcionalmente bom. No mesmo raciocínio, o papel que você desempenha na vida de alguém será desempenhado por outra pessoa na sua vida. Acontece bastante com relacionamentos. Em um você é despertado para um lado novo da vida, no outro você traz alguém para este novo lado. Onde antes você era o plaindweller, você acabou virando o edgewalker. Em um você é dominado, no outro você impõe o seu domínio. Em um você só faz besteira, no outro você só reclama das besteiras do outro. O ciúme que você provocou antes, você sente agora.

É claro que esse tipo de coisa não funciona bem assim. Tem gente que tem muita sorte e tem gente que só se ferra. E quando a coisa é feita por vingança então, o golpe vingativo é sempre mais forte.

I've started dreaming again...

After along period of reality, nights spent in the total darkness of dreamless slumber, I've started dreaming again. Dreams of video games and all my muses. It's so nice to start the day with the feeling of exiting a theatre...

This week's movie:


Oversimplified summary:
This gang lord gets betrayed by his gang and ends up in jail. He undergoes an experimental rehabilitation program that messes with his subconscious. He is set free after the tests show that he is uncapable of commiting an act of violence: he feels sick whenever his violent instincts arise. But once he is out, the society he had once brutalized turns on him for revenge. But without his instincts, how is he to defend himself?

Gotta say: this one is not recomended for the psychotic minds. Violence here is seen as trivial, senseless, guiltless... And if you have the slightest bit of madness in you, you do start getting some absurd ideas... One thing that intrigued me though, was when father said that he had watched the movie when it was released, and he was about my age. He was appauled. I myself felt a bit disturbed in the beggining, but later on, I sort of got used to it. Goes to show how violence is banalized nowadays. I get to thinking: oder generations used to feel sick at scenes of violence, just as the character did after the treatment. Is my generation free of such mental conditioning, or are we actually more perverted, conditioned to violence?

Anyway, a few considerations regarding the movie.
First of all, I had the clearest impression that they were all russians. From the strange words they'd use, all filled with phonetics similar to those in russian, the constant use of words like "brother" or "comrade" or such, to the eternaly cold weather. This would make the movie into a sort of Cold War critique against the Soviet Union and their rationalist ways to solve social problems like criminality. Of couse there was also a tad of british or irish: their accents, the police uniforms... But I guess that comes from the actors and the locations. The whole russian thing speaks louder.
Apparently to support this, there's a great use of white and red (colors of both socialist parties that began the socialist revolution) all around the movie. I still cannot understand why is it that everything related to the gang is white: they dink milk, they dress in white, most of the backgrounds and objects related to them are white.
There is also some paradoxical identification between the gang leader and the image of Christ: there are red stains in his wrist like the ones in the statues of Christ in his bedroom, he is delivered to the authorities by his own gang... Still couldn't exactly understand that either.

To end this, I'll just leave an observation: there's this figure who seems to be the gang leader's legal councelor or something, called inspector Deltoid (that's the name of a muscle, mind you). The way he speaks reminded me vividly of Watto, the master of young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: episode 1. Peculiar...

I know this review leaves much to be desired, but it's been four days since I say the movie... All the hype is gone by now. Anyway, highly recommeded if you have no psychotic records!

Atenção!!
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Como muitos de vocês sabem, minha graduação do curso de artes plásticas acontecerá no final deste ano. Faremos uma exposição coletiva dos trabalhos de graduação de todo mundo entre os dias 10 a 17 de DEZEMBRO, no prédio principal da FAAP, no piso acima do museu (onde geralmente são feitas as exposições. Durante este período, estarão acontecendo as defesas de tese de cada um dos alunos. Estima-se que aconteçam três por dia. Ainda não tenho a data precisa de quando será a minha defesa de tese, mas estarei deixando vocês atualizados no processo, à medida em que for acontecendo. Quero todo mundo que não esteja viajando lá!!


Em uma nota especial, gostaria muito, por razões relativas ao meu trabalho de graduação, que as garotas que foram retratadas nas minhas pinturas comparecessem. Já falei com muitas, mas ainda preciso avisar outras. Estarei enviando e-mails...

Vamos lá, gente! É a minha reta final!!
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