Before the sun, in his face, blindness is inevitable. And it is she who appears in the foreground and, at least partially, announces a certain intoxication, vertigo or a simple, but no less forceful, state of ecstasy. The temporary ocular deficiency results from contact between two living organisms and is seen as a power, on the understanding that any loss, lack or failure never come about without being accompanied by unlikely gains or surprising possibilities. The phenomenon that occurs after eye contact with sun beams – when translated as loss, in this case of one’s sight – could be compared to skin, land and water. It is that in its ambiguous condition, being simultaneously near and far, being vital, mortal and light, the sun provokes both desire and repulse. And, in recent times, the need for some product that protects us from its rays further accentuates this point. On the other hand, it is the sun that takes on the responsibility to extinguish the darkness that has terrorised man since he has walked the earth. Hence the fact that the discovery of fire led to socializing process and the emergence of electricity became, to a certain degree, a milestone in the modern world. Both are ways of curing the sun’s temporary absence in parts of the world at a given time. And if it is not present the whole time right here, that is precisely to attenuate its ambiguity: when excessively present, its rays burn, toast and produce aridity; when too absent, everything grows weak, dwindles or is extinct from what is left in the world.
However, where would this text go next if it were to naively announce that, as much as heat, light is the primordial identity of the sun? Would it not be better to reserve this categorical assertion for other channels of communication, seeing as redundancy can end up quelling the statement that makes it clear that nothing and no-one is stable in this planetary system. What is the point of thinking of a hypothetical moment, probably furnished with a geological temporality, when even the sun will put its light out. Meanwhile, avoiding the reverie easily caused by De cara para o sol [Facing the sun], it seems more fitting to think about the extent to which light can also obscure and lead to madness. And while it is quite true that none of this changes our significant way of living with this star – as it has always been a trigger of blindness, even though it enables the visibility of things and the temporal permanence of the subject on Earth – it would probably be somewhat relevant to assert how its light in excess can drive one mad. However, excess is another “blatant obviousness” that seeks to escape what is of interest, because it does not convince a priori that the primary intention of this text is to question the clichés entangled in the principles that structure arguments about the search for balance in life.
But, behind all this, a voice can be heard that will not be silenced until it has sent to hell this pile of clichés that, blinding me, end up distorting the script of central interest which I write to find some parallel with the series of Daré’s paintings, recently commissioned by friends and family. Nevertheless, something needs to be agreed right away: a cliché is a way out to confront De cara para o sol, avoiding just rambling around in the blindness it causes. It is that engendering clichés with the value of the rambling, in this case, touches precisely on mismatches that open up possible reassembled ways in which we see or are blinded before so many common situations. And the paintings are not hidden; they deliberately assume that it is cliché that we want to talk about. At least until something more categorical can be said or perceived, bearing in mind that blindness is involved here.
A calico glued over the outline of the figures portrayed in the painting suggests some forced Brazilianess in the air. It’s that the sunlight and profusion of colours of the country remain as promises to the believing and disbelieving, announcing unparalleled delights for several summer days, the wealth of the “naturally beautiful” country, full of incongruence in the way in which it lives with the symbolic that has been around before it arrived with such uncontrolled and destructive superbia. Calico that unveils and discovers worlds and beyond. A popularity maintained as an artifice of profusion and exuberance with which images of Brazil are propagated. Meanwhile, here everything is – dating back to other carnivals – the ruin of the extension in perpetual reform. This is because the money for the restoration will never materialise, and the idea that we are still being built no longer holds any weight with anyone. There is also the partying, another way of translating to anyone who is not very familiar with Brazil, a typically Brazilian peculiarity: that of disguising the real spectacle of this tropical region, where the said star shines brighter, favouring blindness over the neglect that looms over various instances.
Daré shows previously commissioned works. Nothing is for sale, but anything might feature in future shows. Each work, sold by the artist to friends and family, belongs to the portrait subjects. He lives in the countryside. He came to the capital to take orders for De cara para o sol, a series of paintings based on a work process that might cause discomfort and repudiate many independent contemporary artists, who preach a posture with a practicality kept in the files of their studios, often favouring an entanglement in systems of wealth expansion of the well-off who selfishly keep their treasures out of the public view. This ends up turning the artist into a producer of luxury objects which have the potential to gain symbolic validation, but, moreover, have even more potential to appreciate economically. That is why Daré has decided to add to his exhibition his artist-work commodity, a speculative study that aims to build a “Regulatory Chamber for the Art Market”. In this context, the process is a simple one: it involves equations for making the portrait orders. The portrait subject shall respect the value formula for the order of a painting by the artist, considering information registered by the “Regulatory Chamber” in its single article, which is structured by the following items: 1) the artist’s body mass index; 2) the daily gold price per gram; 3) the surface of the canvas on which the painting will be produced and 4) IEF, the “speculative future index”, with which one can identify, according to the artist’s participation in different kinds of events, a lasting and ever-growing form of recognition in the market system.
As if the IEF and other items of the “Regulatory Chamber” were not enough to satirise every artist’s condition – in terms of his intimate or remote relationship with the market - as is evident in De cara para o sol the portraits are voluntarily associated to the nonchalant conditions of the subject in relation to the landscape. But, it is also interesting to consider the distance and proximity between the subject and the sun, as well as the not so speculative implications on the excess seen as a base for a compromising relational regime. And, the fact that the portraits are produced with photographs in which the subject looks to the sun until momentarily blinded, watery-eyed or entering some state of enjoyment, this engages, with the actual experience, other codes that qualify the set of works made and yet to come.
Josué Mattos