Artist Statement “Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.” ~Anselm Kiefer Basically my artwork dialogues with our distorted and alienated connection with nature, I am interested in abstraction as a carrier for the imagination and remembrance. I’m sometimes inspired in science fiction and biological forms, creating complex and textural surfaces onto flat and 3D structures. The particular pays tribute to the complexities of organic life as well as its incessant regeneration, flow and decadence. There is a tangible alien component in the artwork that offer a haptic quality to the f inall results. I elaborate my feelings and thoughts through my artwork. I conceive my emotions before I am capable to process them. My art job juxtaposed accurate precision with various chemical reactions that are sometimes out of my control. I can’t ever prevent the disaster I’m about to perform when I start working, I look to the canvas and begin to fight gently with it, no sketches, no previous dramatic or comic considerations. The process starts in a considerable solemn manner, everything must appear to be quiet and trivial, a blank surface and me, we look at each other, we both know that tranquility won’t last for along, then I turn on the music, loud, I need to reset my actual mood and make my thoughts go offline, at this point I’m excited, me and my fellow ‘virgin canvas’ are completely in synchro, if everything keeps going smoothly I will be in the studio all day and all night long, specially in summertime, otherwise if I can’t find my inspiration better leave the studio quickly, for the whole day. I always work on two or three pieces at time, not necessarily doing diptychs or triptychs, firstly because the imagery in my mind are often bigger than the surface I’m about to operate, secondly because I need time to the chemical reactions. In my opinion the area of painting is, in principle, horizontal, on a big table or directly on the floor. In this catalog sizes of pictures are given in centimeters, height preceding width; the signature is always "Adriano Ribeiro" unless otherwised stated.
Adriano Borges Ribeiro, 1970 Ribeiro was born and grew up in Belém; a strange, beautiful city in the east coast of northern Brazil, Amazon area, filled with unusual life structures, with amazing bizarre people including some brilliant artists, musicians, story tellers, hunters, fishers who positively forged his entire life. In 1995 he left Belém and went to Salvador da Bahia to study Fine Art and Design at the EBA (Escola de belas Artes) Ribeiro started the grad school, but when he was about to finish it for personal reasons he has to get back to his born city, then once he’s solved his problems he was going to go back to EBA school, but by that time, his career was already on its way, and he became a full time artist. After a year or so he decided to embark on a research trip, right in the heart of the Amazon jungle, looking for drawings, shapes, volumes, colors, cave art, tattoos, in short, everything to do with the ancient pre-Columbian people. He was there for about 4 years, that was an important period of his life. After that adventure he focused on sculpture and painting, evolving from realism into abstract surrealism. By the end of he studies years he experimented with photography and film-making. Adriano moved back to Belém and start his art atelier on a propriety location of his family, produced series of canvas works, sculptures and installations, made part of various art shows, he won an important prize, the SART IV, in the city of Porto Velho, capital of the Rondonia state. As for his technique, he mixes sculptural elements, textured designs surfaces and assemble organic/biological like volumes and paint them with acrylic enamel and oil, natural pigments collage and then superimpose them all on flat surfaces. He uses acrylic colors, oil, bitumen, sand, wood, micro crystalline and bee waxes, some neutral emulsions, fused plastic, natural resins. He mixes them using different level of heat, on high numbers of translucent juxtaposed layers to achieve a kind of 3D effect, optical depth, experimenting advanced and original chemistry procedures to aging the surfaces, with different substances and developed the method of using some complex chemical reactions to manipulate the paint and surfaces rather than using brushes or spatulas. However his advanced technique does not represent the main part of his making art, he’s firstly and instinctively an abstract artist, works on a atelier not in a scientific lab, he’s always experimented extensively with aesthetics in form and concept, technique is merely the servant of his intuitive artistic expression. Currently his art flows alternating science and Sci-Fi, poetry and underground, geometry and calligraphic elements, organic structures and architectural drawings in a continuous on/off, within some sort of bipolarity zone, annihilating and self regenerating each other. He opens these psychological containers, apparently ambiguous and solve them on a single scenario, imagining that all information in the universe is right there, in that small piece of idea, disappeared, apparently dissolved but certainly recoverable. Ribeiro moved to Europe in 2000, Switzerland then Italy, he begun to taking part in local group exhibitions, art competitions, when he won the prize International Fine Arts “La Phoenix” in Palermo, Italy he saw that things began to move around his artistic subjects, that cultural exchange seemed starting to work, that was very promising, people were intrigued by that exotic form of art. www.adrianoribeiro.com www.facebook.com/eiroart www.twitter.com/eiroart
ABR1505 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1510 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1501 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1504 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1506 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1507 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1508 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1522 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1509 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1527 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1529 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1523 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1521 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1528 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1525 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1511 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1530 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1531 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1524 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1512 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1520 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1513 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1514 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1515 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1526 Mixed media on canvas - 60x70x5cm - 2015
ABR1517 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1518 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1519 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1516 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015
ABR1503 Mixed media on canvas - 80x120x5cm - 2015