Manoel Veiga (Recife, PE, 1966). Lives and works in São Paulo.
Manoel Veiga’s painting is an uncertain science, the essence of creating. For ten years he has manifested the existential duality of his art, rather than representing it. His profound scientific knowledge of the pigments that he mixes affords him greater control and, combined with his fascination for the space-time relationship, grants his work an antagonistic condition; control releases, allows and respects the fundamental role of chance, which has its own time in the final composition. There are three basic elements in his work: canvas, water and pigments. The clash with the canvas is made on the floor; carefully mixed pigments to show a single colour find their way onto the canvas through the paint brush. While the paint dries, Veiga sprays water over the emulsion and creates gradients to which the particles of the different pigments react, revealing the complexity of colours in the emulsion. A flow is established on the canvas which Veiga calls a “living system”, that may last up to ten hours to settle, “a physical-chemical and dynamic process, in which the artist's hand supplied only the initial conditions", he explains. His latest paintings, exhibited in his solo show in February 2010, explore and evince the presence of the white background, an element which in his previous works had been diluted in the colour stains, comprehended as space. In the new works, white volumes created with acrylic plaster jump from the background and assert their presence in a new system of interpretation. In Veiga’s painting, opposites collaborate, simultaneously representing the theme and the methodology.
Manoel Veiga’s painting is an uncertain science, the essence of creating. For ten years he has manifested the existential duality of his art, rather than representing it. His profound scientific knowledge of the pigments that he mixes affords him greater control and, combined with his fascination for the space-time relationship, grants his work an antagonistic condition; control releases, allows and respects the fundamental role of chance, which has its own time in the final composition. There are three basic elements in his work: canvas, water and pigments. The clash with the canvas is made on the floor; carefully mixed pigments to show a single colour find their way onto the canvas through the paint brush. While the paint dries, Veiga sprays water over the emulsion and creates gradients to which the particles of the different pigments react, revealing the complexity of colours in the emulsion. A flow is established on the canvas which Veiga calls a “living system”, that may last up to ten hours to settle, “a physical-chemical and dynamic process, in which the artist's hand supplied only the initial conditions", he explains. His latest paintings, exhibited in his solo show in February 2010, explore and evince the presence of the white background, an element which in his previous works had been diluted in the colour stains, comprehended as space. In the new works, white volumes created with acrylic plaster jump from the background and assert their presence in a new system of interpretation. In Veiga’s painting, opposites collaborate, simultaneously representing the theme and the methodology.
