Marcelo Silveira (Gravatá, PE, 1962). Lives and works in Recife.
Marcelo Silveira’s work seems to question any preestablished category, challenging and testing, among others, the apparently firmly established definitions of sculpture, popular art, craftwork and even art collecting. Hoarding, in fact, constitutes a preferred strategy of the Pernambuco artist: objects that resemble domestic utensils, evidently deprived of any utility and that, however, seem to hold some meaning; spheres of various different materials and sizes, immobile, as if waiting for some announced event; hundreds of glass objects (from short glasses and bottles to mere shards of glass), everything can be gathered in Marcelo Silveira’s large collections. Often the original forms, sculpted in kinds of wood typical of the Brazilian northeast (caulim, cajacatinga, jaqueira, baraúna), are used as moulds to produce the other pieces, cast in aluminium or other materials, through a procedure that reveals the eminently conceptual character of Marcelo Silveira's work; genuinely encyclopaedic intake. The collages produced in recent years serve to confirm, albeit in a subtle manner, this fascination the artist has for artwork in which hoarding and overlapping (of materials, processes, images, ideas...) have always constituted his chosen creative procedures.
Marcelo Silveira’s work seems to question any preestablished category, challenging and testing, among others, the apparently firmly established definitions of sculpture, popular art, craftwork and even art collecting. Hoarding, in fact, constitutes a preferred strategy of the Pernambuco artist: objects that resemble domestic utensils, evidently deprived of any utility and that, however, seem to hold some meaning; spheres of various different materials and sizes, immobile, as if waiting for some announced event; hundreds of glass objects (from short glasses and bottles to mere shards of glass), everything can be gathered in Marcelo Silveira’s large collections. Often the original forms, sculpted in kinds of wood typical of the Brazilian northeast (caulim, cajacatinga, jaqueira, baraúna), are used as moulds to produce the other pieces, cast in aluminium or other materials, through a procedure that reveals the eminently conceptual character of Marcelo Silveira's work; genuinely encyclopaedic intake. The collages produced in recent years serve to confirm, albeit in a subtle manner, this fascination the artist has for artwork in which hoarding and overlapping (of materials, processes, images, ideas...) have always constituted his chosen creative procedures.
