Milton Machado (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 1947). Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
In his early work, predominantly drawings, produced in the days of the dictatorship, Milton Machado made use of his background in architecture to create designs and sketches of narratives that looked logical, but were actually fictional and unfeasible. Over the course of the following decades, the artist progressively increased the scale and diversity of the genres used, including objects and sculptures, video and photography, as well as large installations, but always continued to fundamentally explore the tension generated by an artwork that challenges the models of scientific knowledge. With his interventions, Milton Machado establishes, or makes evident, surprising and revealing relationships, traversing the distance between theoretically isolated spheres: the industrial and the artistic; the architectural and the pictorial; the familial and the political, etc. Despite, or perhaps complementary to, the supposed inflexibility of his thinking, the titles of his works often reveal a profound, almost surreal irony, that contributes to the effectiveness of his destabilising strategy (for example, the 1989 work: Dois burros girando em torno de dois postes aos quais estão amarrados, perseguindo um pássaro que voa das mãos de Denis Diderot [‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’] – Two donkeys walking around two posts to which they are tied, chasing a bird that flies from the hands of Denis Diderot [‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’]).
In his early work, predominantly drawings, produced in the days of the dictatorship, Milton Machado made use of his background in architecture to create designs and sketches of narratives that looked logical, but were actually fictional and unfeasible. Over the course of the following decades, the artist progressively increased the scale and diversity of the genres used, including objects and sculptures, video and photography, as well as large installations, but always continued to fundamentally explore the tension generated by an artwork that challenges the models of scientific knowledge. With his interventions, Milton Machado establishes, or makes evident, surprising and revealing relationships, traversing the distance between theoretically isolated spheres: the industrial and the artistic; the architectural and the pictorial; the familial and the political, etc. Despite, or perhaps complementary to, the supposed inflexibility of his thinking, the titles of his works often reveal a profound, almost surreal irony, that contributes to the effectiveness of his destabilising strategy (for example, the 1989 work: Dois burros girando em torno de dois postes aos quais estão amarrados, perseguindo um pássaro que voa das mãos de Denis Diderot [‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’] – Two donkeys walking around two posts to which they are tied, chasing a bird that flies from the hands of Denis Diderot [‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’]).
