Arquiteotonicas: Otoni Mesquita opens new exhibition at the Palace of Justice

The show has free admission starting this Thursday (01/23), at 7pm

Imaginary cities that complement each other almost endlessly, engravings of their fanciful inhabitants, objects decorated with symbols of invented cultures, a tower of babel that brings together the life and art of artist Otoni Mesquita. After almost 40 years since his first individual exhibition and also marking his 45 years of artistic trajectory, Otoni presents the exhibition "Arquiteotonicasopening this Thursday (01/23), at 7:00 pm, at the Palácio da Justiça Cultural Center (Av. Eduardo Ribeiro, 901, Centro). Admission is free.

The "Otonian" cities that visitors may glimpse in the Juiz Manoel Corrêa de Miranda and Desembargador Benjamin Rubim rooms, at the Palace of Justice, are part of a series of creations dating from the 1970s and 1980s. Nicknamed "Arquiteotonicas" by a friend of the artist, the "constructions" emerged at random moments in Otoni's life, in meetings, assemblies, during his master's degree, and also during trips to different cities in Latin America and Europe.

"I was always interested in castles in my childhood and drew them a lot, and I also always had this relationship with cities, but it was from the 1980s on that I started to draw more often. Cinema, trips, and my work as an art teacher influenced me a lot", he says.

The paintings, which were displayed on fabrics in an art installation, were created from the junction of fragments from different moments in the artist's trajectory. A drawing of a city from 1987 is joined to one from 2013, inspired by a trip to Istanbul, and thus the cities complement each other, mixing influences and diverse cultures.

"In my travels, I used to take a lot of notes, and these notes that accompany these cities are printed on the fabrics where the cities are laid out. The notebooks I took on these trips will also be in the exhibition," she explains.

An example is the notebook that Otoni took to Cartagena, where an alphabet invented by the artist is written down. "These diverse texts are also a way of rescuing my formation and trajectory, because through them I can recover memories and remember what I was doing when I created or designed some city or work," he adds.

Tower of Babel' and 'Ottonian' inhabitants

'Arquiteotonicas' will also have a "Tower of Babel". At first, the artist says, the tower would be covered by the same imaginary cities in lambe-lambe format, but as he was building the work, another idea took over the artistic process.

"The work is going on, and I ended up changing my mind. I thought later about putting newspapers in different languages, but then I remembered that I had reproductions of dead languages at home that could be part of the tower. I went home with this in mind and ended up going through my house for about five hours. I found a lot of my own stuff and ended up deciding to cover the tower with my own work and with other elements that were part of my life, a work that is a self-reference".

There are hieroglyphics, images of a city where he stayed in France, exercise lists, graphs, alphabets, drawings, sketches, a tower of Babel that reflects Otonian's own universe. In addition, the public will be able to see chalcogravures of the inhabitants and also boxes decorated as "offerings" of the imaginary cities.

"I discovered calcogravure in a visit to a Cuban friend, in Vitória, and I was enchanted, I even presented some works in Belém. These inhabitants remind me of something medieval or oriental, my work is not very Amazonian at times, it has a neo-romantic aspect. The romantic painters of the 18th and 19th centuries were escapists, escaping from their time, with old themes in other geographies. I confess that the world and Brazil today are something I dislike, so this more fantastical proposal, of something softer, is more pleasing to me. It may seem alienating, but it is a form of survival, a romantic way to escape from the here and now," he confesses.

Career

On January 25 it will be 40 years since Otoni Mesquita's first solo exhibition, "Fruturbano", which was held in the hall of the Teatro Amazonas, with artistic direction by Sérgio Cardoso - who is now the curator of the new exhibition.

"I didn't plan the exhibition for the date, I didn't remember the 45 years of my career, nor the 40 years of the exhibition. I ended up remembering when I was doing a study of the 1980s for a text and discovered that my exhibition was the first of 1980, and that was very significant, because now it is one of the first of 2020″, he explains. "I developed my career with a certain variety of techniques, not only with etchings and paintings, but with watercolor, nankeen, performance, installation, video art, things that I continue to mix, and taking back these references, working on top of my work made me recover a lot. I am very physically worn out with this work, but extremely happy. This is what animates and rejuvenates an artist: his production", he declares.

Sérgio Cardoso affirms that the exhibition is innovative, maintaining Otoni's commitment to contemporaneity in the arts. "I am very honored and happy to receive the invitation for this curatorship 40 years after that first exhibition. Otoni is an actor of himself, a multi-media artist who reinvents himself at each exhibition. We are part of a generation of artists who have a commitment to the transformations of temporaneity, so it is a great emotion to see this exhibition that I consider creative and innovative and that instigates the transcendence of the plastic arts in Amazonas", comments the artist.

Exhibition

After the opening this Thursday (23/01), at 19h, "Arquiteotonicas" is on display at the Palace of Justice until April 23, during the opening hours of the space. In January, the cultural center is open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 9am to 3pm, and on Sundays, from 9am to 2pm.

As of February, the hours are back to normal, with visits from Tuesday to Saturday, from 9am to 5pm, and on Sundays, from 9am to 2pm.

With information from the press office