CARLOS MATUCK THE JAPANESE ROOM AND OTHER FOREIGN PERSPECTIVES
Front cover: Goltri Wildan Coman & Joce Jorse 120 X 120 cm Acrylic on paper pasted on canvas – 2014
CARLOS MATUCK THE JAPANESE ROOM AND OTHER FOREIGN PERSPECTIVES CURATORS CLAUDIO ROCHA AND PRISCILA MAINIERI INTRODUCTION WALDEMAR ZAIDLER PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREI SUCONIC MAY 22 TO JUNE 28, 2014 PRISCILA MAINIERI STUDIO GALLERY Sﾃグ PAULO, BRAZIL
São Paulo, April 27, 2014
My dear friend, Carlos Matuck, I am very pleased to be visiting yet another exhibit of yours, “A Sala Japonesa e Outros Olhares Estrangeiros” (The Japanese Room and Other Foreign Perspectives). Claudio Rocha, Priscila Mainieri and you came up with an excellent selection from your recent paintings. In my opinion, these works reflect the ripening of your thirty years of research into this art genre, or at least an important part of this research. Claudio told me that the name of the exhibit came up as you were arranging the paintings in the gallery spaces. While arranging the paintings in the room on the upper floor, according to technical criteria, you realized that you had grouped together only the works produced during your artistic residence in Japan, or works which resulted from it. Since all the other paintings, except for two or three, had been created during other annual residences made since 2006 in Denmark, Germany and Poland, the name of the exhibit, “A Sala Japonesa e Outros Olhares Estrangeiros” (The Japanese Room and Other Foreign Perspectives) arose naturally. I honestly believe that vodka, beer and sake may have different flavors and percentages of alcohol, and may result in different degrees of hangovers, but what we call booze (pifão in Brazil), oh my!, that always stays the same, except to experts who have a method of measuring levels of intoxication, depending on how murky it renders our mental faculties, but this is not our case. Considering the international arts jet set and the distinctive spices from different parts of the world, you must agree that this exhibit is based on a particular research that transcends the locality where the works were produced. I can see in them your technical mastery of the techniques you have been developing, more prominently than just circumstantial references, and I can also see how they interact with a very personal subject and an indistinct but visible iconographic universe to create a cohesive work. I’d like to discuss with you an aspect of this unit, namely, the process of cutting up portraits and then pasting the pieces, mixing them all up, with the face of one and the snout of the other. I find it interesting that somehow the cut-and-paste technique pervades the exhibit, even in the heads that escaped the guillotine. These may have been spared, but I bet they were scrutinized and risked serious consequences. This is suggested to me by the succession of the portraits, the position of the faces on the paper, the relationship between the colors of the series, the images developed from the ink marks left on the paper used as a liner to protect the workbench or to clean the brushes and other painting instruments. I probably sense this because I think your cut-and-paste process is as integrated into the act of painting − as soon as the ink is deposited on the surface − as it is part of what came before it; the cut-and-paste process is evident even when it is not carried out, just as there are echoes of the operations that precede the work. This has probably occurred to me to because I know exactly how you work.
It has been said that there is no such thing as a blank canvas, and that the act of painting is indeed the act of sweeping the clichés that the artist finds on it, whether he wants to or not. The canvas is like a battlefield between everything that resides on it − the painter’s projections − and the artist himself. It is the work that precedes the painting and yet is a part of it. In your case, this preparation is concrete and visible in countless sketches, notes, and readings, and in your iconographic research. I have always perceived your anguish in battling clichés, the fact that you know what you are up against but don’t know how deal with it…searching. I enjoy seeing how you deal with this paradoxical situation of searching for novelties among the most stereotyped clichés that may exist, from stamps to dated fashions, an intriguing contradiction that pervades your works. That being said, if there is any pre-painting work, nothing keeps a post-painting work from existing. It appears obvious to me that to cut, mix and paste does not come after the painting, but rather, is part of it, i.e., it is the extension of the same search for the same thing. You have mentioned so many times that this process involves chance, but I don’t agree. Maybe it’s something you do involuntarily. There are many precedents, and you cannot ignore the careful planning that exists in each work. You have never done well-behaved portraits, without some intervention to modify what you were doing or what you had in mind, always giving up on the original project during its implementation. I remember the first portraits, maybe the only ones that followed what I would call a traditional course − some self-portraits in watercolor, a pastel of Caetano Veloso, and… It’s funny that despite domestic influences, you were never inclined to do caricatures, but, instead, stuck to portraying famous personalities. (I say that because caricatures imply knowledge of the caricatured subject, and you have recently started to portray strangers.) Then came the series of portraits made with cut and pasted marble paper, followed by collages made with countless, tiny stamped images on colored paper and cut out – often paying homage to your favorite characters (imaginary landscapes?). Not long after, you started working obsessively with stencils, enchanted domains of stilettos, clips, and masking tape, always questioning your own way of performing portraits, by exploring anamorphic deformations and gigantisms, yet always within figuration. I never knew (nor was it important to know) if your enthusiasm for cutting instruments, pasting stuff, and structurally combing pieces of paper or wood that you yourself separated would be more or less intense than your talent for accumulating junk materials. Of course no one needs a special talent for accumulating junk materials, but to remember that they exist, and even knowing where they have been put away, takes a guy with your memory. It’s no wonder that during your first artist residence in Marianowo (Poland), which did not provide art materials, you remembered some samples of paper that had been waiting a long time to be put to respectable use. It was a brilliant idea, the true DNA of a street peddler:
the samples of paper would be perfect for carrying with you on the trip, because they could be detached right at the workplace, and the pieces glued (Hurrah!) to each other in a convenient format, thus forming a single sheet of paper. After working on the painting, the paper would again be separated (Hurrah!), and return to its original size, thus being repatriated without any trouble. Back home, the pieces would be glued together again (yes!), but ... wait, what if they were glued in a different order, all mixed up? This procedure led to many others, which I identify in all the works of this exhibit. Since Marianowo, you have been experimenting with new support materials − canvas, metal plates, cut wood – studying and testing techniques. Initially, paintings on paper, eminently narrative, comprised 10-20 series frames, each frame consisting, on average, of 6 smaller sheets, each series based on just one photographic reference − a criminal record − with precious photographs of the offender in traditional mug shot poses, his qualifications and the description of the crime committed. The sheets were placed side by side in juxtaposition with smaller sheets, and fictional texts conceived from the data on the subject’s record were calligraphed in sequence. The sheets were then disassembled and the individual whose photograph was on the record was portrayed in the interstices between the letters and the words. Afterwards, the sheets were reassembled according to criteria of readability. Although the written words may not have been immediately, if at all, comprehended and the image may have taken time to be revealed, the work proposed a riddle that had to be answered, stated and fabled.
João Guimarães Rosa (detail) 70 × 100 cm Collage made with marble paper – 1981 América (detail) 34 × 54 cm Collage made with stamps – 1981 Joaquim, Mário and Affonso (detail) 400 × 1500 cm Spray paint on wood panel – 1985
I feel this has been changing. Currently, the series of portraits that are to be guillotined (or disassembled when painted on small juxtaposed canvas) and shuffled are being produced with portraits of different people. I think that by doing so, you are moving away from figuration, from illustrative and narrative aspects, and eventually creating “characters” that stare at us from across the surface of the painting, that shoot first, with no discussion, and only ask later. In this case, stories may or may not emerge. I think this unleashes the power that one figure attributes to another when both are observed simultaneously, and, for this reason, they should be grouped into pairs, trios or quartets, such as the nationalist series from the Bakumatsu Period, displayed in the Japanese Room of the exhibit, or, better yet, grouped in the same frame, such as the “Goltri Wildan Coman & Joce Jorse” and the “Matilio Edgueiço & Maorge Murwardra & Jejorie Reeson” portraits. I think these portraits lose strength when isolated; the process becomes a pretext, like a triptych without one of its parts, and this is of no surprise, since they were conceived together. This way of potentiating one figure through the other, as the outcome of organizing the pieces, makes me wonder whether you are exploring human nature through the portrayed character or are promoting the identification of this character’s figures with human nature itself, thus identifying one with the other, in a process analogous to a landscape that blends in with nature itself.
Phil Witthaker Number 11 62,5 × 41 cm Calligraphic ink on paper – 2009
Actually, for thirty years you have been exploring landscapes with the same intensity that you have been developing the portraits, but there is no landscape in this exhibition. Could this really be? I wonder, since I believe there indeed is a landscape, or at least a kind of landscape: the Trans-oceanic and Resort at Sea paintings. In these works you repeat the same cut-and-paste procedure used in most of the other portraits in the exhibit, but with an important difference: the painting is done on printed paper taken from an old magazine, but not just any magazine, picked at random: the pages come from a National Geographic, or ads of sea travel, with images of ships bound for distant lands. They are a series of landscape metaphors that are linked together, because of the people looking with their back to us as we look at them at the landscape from the edge of an alleged pier, suggesting a port scene. If the people standing on the pier were looking at planes instead of ships, they would be instantly transferred to the airport, and we with them. If it were trains, we would be transferred to the station; camels, to the edge of the desert; winter sports, to the mountains, and so on. In these paintings, perspective and landscape rely on the metaphors used. In fact they are composed of just two flat planes, one plane being the people, and the other, the magazine pages that tend to flatten into one, almost into a figure with no depth of background. However, I am led to perceive depth there, and what causes this feeling seems to be the combination of shuffling the pieces of paper together with printed images, suggested by the “vision” of an imaginary ship halfway to the horizon. Added to this feeling is the fact that the people are standing with their back to us, thus putting me on an intermediary plane - I am seen when I see them - whereby I enter the painting together with these people or take the painting from them and bring it close to me. The landscape implicit in these paintings seems to “contaminate” the rest of the exhibit, extending out to include the fragmented portraits, which seem to further confirm that the mounted set extends out beyond the frame. I even think it might contribute to reinforcing the ideas of landscape and portrait, by enabling the apprehension of something with no definite status roaming through the limbo between them. Well, my dear friend, at this point I see you holding all the trumps, in total control, with positive and varied results to guide your research, bearing witness to the fact that painting is quite definitely far from dying out. Best wishes,
Waldemar Zaidler
Family album – Kuriki Family Booklet of 22 pages 16 × 11 cm Ink on paper – 2012
5 Portraits of Bakumatsu Nationalists 188,5 × 97 cm (each) Ink and watercolor on paper – 2012
5 Portiontsu of Bamalists Natraitskual Numbers 1, 5 and 2 92 × 63 cm Acrylic on canvas – 2012
Preparatory drawing on a travel notebook
Bakumatsu Japan: Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 50 × 32 cm Calligraphic ink and dry pastel on printed paper – 2012
Preparatory studies made with fountain pen
Asa’s Grandfather – Mr. Takeushi Hajime 96 × 65 cm Ink and watercolor on paper – 2012
The calligraphic text, based on information from the back of the photo says:
Showa year 9 February 24 Mr. Takeushi Hajime wearing glasses and dance costume Asa, a student from Nagoya University of Arts, carries a photo of her grandfather permanently in her wallet.
Tamiko Kato’s father Mr. Shizuhiko Tanigawa, Numbers 2 and 3 117 × 85 cm. Ink and watercolor on paper – 2012
Photo from the family album of Tamiko Kato
Trans-oceanic 100 × 200 cm Acrylic on printed paper pasted on canvas – 2013 Image from The Hulton Getty Picture Collection: Liners - The Golden Age
Resort at sea 100 × 100 cm Acrylic on printed paper pasted on canvas – 2013
The Departure Number 3
The Departure Number 1
42 × 72 cm Graffiti on paper – 2014
42 × 24 cm Graffiti on paper – 2014
The original drawings before reassembly
Rua da Palma, 37, Lisbon 134 × 69 cm Ink and watercolor on paper – 2010 Family photo bought from a street vendor in Sintra, Portugal
Cardoso Correia, Lisbon, 1st Series, Number 1 and 2 70 × 100 cm Ink and watercolor on paper – 2010
Cardoso Correia, Lisbon, 2nd series, numbers 2 and 3 70 × 50 cm (each) Ink and watercolor on paper – 2010
Elisa and João - Lisbon 01.05.1904 Number 1 and 2 70 × 50 cm Ink and watercolor on paper – 2010
Elisa and João – Lisbon, 01.05.1904 2nd. Series, number 1 70 × 50 cm Watercolor and calligraphic ink on paper – 2010
Double Portrait Numbers 4, 5 and 6 75 × 52 cm Watercolor on paper – 2011
Photography from the book Least Wanted - a century of american mugshots
Ancient document Number 1 and 4 102 × 72 cm Watercolor and calligraphic ink on paper – 2011 Prisoner in magenta background, A and B 30 × 20 cm Watercolor and calligraphic ink on paper – 2011
Matilio Edgueiรงo & Maorge Murwardra & Jejorie Reeson 120 ร 180 cm (in 3 canvas) Acrylic on paper pasted on canvas 2014
Two of 12 paintings used in the series, before reassembly
Ahles Juasell 96 × 53 cm
Hen Yulians 96 × 60 cm Oil on canvas – 2014
Chartin Rusen 90 × 50 cm
Marry Wilrez 74 × 60 cm Oil on canvas – 2014
The self-portrait in Hannover Number 1 and 3 100 × 70 cm Watercolor, ink and calligraphic ink on paper – 2010
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