2006/2007, Vitória – ES: Individual “Reflexos” - Fernando Neyder, Escritório de Arte Contemporânea

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“"Décadence avec Elégance"

Different awareness and conceptions of time were developed throughout different historic eras; however, the most fascinating was, perhaps, the one presented by Charles Baudelaire during the XIX century. His writings profess us a pressing passion for the present, for the waving and evanescent murmur of those days in Paris. His hero is a vagrant who, in his erratic journey through the thousand roads of the world, observes, sees and feels everything and everyone. As an “insatiable Self of the Non-Self”, this flâneur goes on with his march, unveiling the fascinating mysteries of life. As a mirror multiplying itself as shadows and reflections of the multitude, he is not searching any truth; as Baudelaire himself, he knows that only the aesthetic lie is capable to reveal the human truth. As Wilde, Rimbaud and other dandies and decadents who paraded Europe in the century that watched the birth of Modernity, this character looks ardently for beauté et elégance (or would it be, décadence avec elégance?).

But, he did not know that others would multiply what was already numerous, fixating his thirst not only in his own time, but in the idea of a new temporality, which intersects times, spaces and places… This makes past and present transformed into modern, contemporary, “futuristic”, or even timeless. That is what we can see on the enigmatic images of K. Patrício.

As all these eighteen century personas, this young artist from Minas Gerais looks for a contemporary way, not less passionate, to observe our own time, our cities, our souls. His black and white images allude to the loss of illusions which one day identified art with the idea of the new, the progress, and the improvement or of something more dignified. These images do not aim to say what have not been said, but to say again what is possible– which includes the mysterious and the fantastic as well as the ambiguous. He is also a mirror lover, however __ different from the “narcisses” and the “alices”__ he crosses its boundaries, reflecting in himself the world around him.

Inspired by the comics and the Japanese manga universe, as well as by the Egyptian art and Gustav Klint’s art nouveau, K. Patrício pieces mix mass culture and erudite culture, in an indiscriminate hybridization of times, styles, ways, forms __ the most definitive mark of the so called “contemporary art”. Its atmosphere could not only be from the noir movies but also the “B movies,” as well as the German expressionism movies. They are mysterious images, of an ambiguous and androgynous eroticism, which allude to the lack of certainties of our time. They are hedonistic, narcissistic images, but whose glamour allows us to catch a glimpse of an aroma of a little wine, oil, dirt and mud behind impeccable garments.

Almost-pictures, instantaneous images, past, present and future: here is a repertoire of artistic propositions which postulate a reconciliation of man with his time, as in Octavio Paz words, “an incarnate imagination with a timeless now”.

Luiz Flávio
The Contemporary Artist Luiz Flávio is graduated in Fine Arts from EBA-UFMG (Fine Arts School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais Satate) and Academic Art Teacher at Guingnard Art School of the Minas Gerais State University – UEMG.