concrete blonde

Galeria Nara Roesler is proud to host the first solo show by one of the most promising Brazilian young artists, Rodolpho Parigi (São Paulo, 1977). In 2007, just graduated by FAAP, São Paulo, Parigi stood out in the art circuit with his canvas covered with explosive colors. Important collections in Brazil and abroad quickly absorbed the works from the series Limite, from 2008, pointing to the anxiety of the art system in finding the good painting again among the new generation of artists.

In Concrete Blonde, Parigi shows works on paper, paintings and collages. The myth holding that painting does not exist anymore falls down in the paintings of this young artist, who reinvents the technique through his up-to-date, accelerated work. His works mix elements from the past, such as meta-schemes and Op art , with the present/future of the citric and vibrant colors: “concrete blonde”, a mix of concrete art and extravagance.

The critical comment about this exhibition is written by an also young curator, Paula Braga. According to her, Parigi´s canvasses are plenty, as if simultaneous events were happening in each square centimeter of the pictorial field, as if the observer were flying over a reality inside a very fast vehicle. “The eyes seem to be attached to a body in accelerated movement”, she analyses. The acceleration of time, so present in our current life gains color and form in Parigi´s paintings.

They are, in the words of the young critic, chaotic and geometrized landscapes, as if they described a place. According to the artist, such a place is so chaotic that it becomes organic, like the city of São Paulo. Extremely artificial, Parigi´s colors are part of our cultural and technological landscapes, as if coming from computer palettes. “Parigi splashes across the whole field of the canvass, with yellows, greens and pinks of highlighter pens, yet does not underline any phrase; there is no focus or center in these hyperactive compositions: the whole field happens, the events are simultaneous, they reach the surface of the screen at the same time, like a book in which all the lines are highlighted”, says Paula Braga.

The 21st century understand well these fluorescent colors, the constant changes, the accelerated time, and that´s why Parigi´s work is so contemporaneous. “Our bodies are used to getting to grips with drastic changes of scenery in just a few hours of flight, drastic changes in shape in just a few hours of plastic surgery, and to simultaneously deciphering the information we receive through our mobile phones, email, radio, inter-phone”, according to the critic.

Parigi’s daily practice in his workshop begins with several hours of drawing before starting to paint. “These drawings elongate and disentangle the threads of the artist´s researches”, says Braga. The painting execution comes after these exercises, and makes use of computers too. The painting Waves, one of the works included in the show, is a self-appropriation of the painting Concrete, from 2008, the first raid of Parigi through geometric forms. Using a computer to manipulate an image of Concrete, Parigi achieved, by chance, a reordering of vertical stripes from the original image. After three months of work, the digital image embodied into oil on linen.