Fabrício Lopez
From the artist’s own words, the work may seem to be a utopian proposal, involving a range of issues both internal and external to the aesthetic domain, so large that it would hardly have effective grounding in an exhibition hall, especially in our current environment. Its genesis contemplates maritime and terrestrial itineraries, the use of public spaces in the artist’s hometown (Santos, SP), research into specific materials for the unusual use of a traditional technique, photographic and written records, the explicitness of the means used in the making of the works – also with “didactic” objectives –, the creation of an imagery that advances a mythical dimension of a certain Brazilian region… Fabrício Lopez’s work consists in the use of a technique usually associated with the small scale – the woodcut –, in dimensions that can be mistakenly compared to Mexican muralism or to the abstract expressionism of the United States. He contemplates the complex conditions of its discursive genesis without being paralyzed by the fear that it demands a theoretical support that, before any result, safeguards the artist from the condition of the anonymity of those who “spend” an “aesthetic potentiality” in the streets, spraying and painting idiosyncrasies in public places, from a specific material, of themes that are at times literal and at others completely schizophrenic. In contrast, this “inconsequentiality” is seen as proof that it is possible if idealism is gradually sustained, even in the midst of disparate, ambitious, almost megalomaniacal, but pragmatically exploited stimuli. From the simplest, dual aspects, to the most intricate. The hardwood matrix and the paper. The black and white, light and shadow; the “raw” and incisive engraving composed with a “pure” color. The gesture that finds its crystallization in the precariousness of the instrument that engraves the plywood, almost unsuitable to the refinements of that technique – seems incisive, somewhat violent in the delineation of figures, but also spontaneous and unpretentious in the composition of abstract elements, of an evanescent chromaticism. The abstract masses coexist with photographic structures and a few writings in a game of incisive presence and loss of referentiality. The figure consumed by the mass “of nature”, the frank materiality of the works, their visual quality launching them to a mythical level that we can no longer neglect. A simple demonstration against the announced bankruptcy of an entire culture.