Victor Lema Riqué | MARS ATTACKS THE WORLD | Galerie Z22 | 25.04.-29.04.2023

VICTOR LEMA RIQUÉ
Born in 1955 in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he attended school and university. In 1979 he received a scholarship to the College of Communication and Arts (ECA) of the University of São Paulo (USP), where he studied until 1984. São Paulo became the center of his life, interrupted by longer working stays in Paris, London, Bristol, Berlin and Dale/Norway. Beginning with a color-intensive figurative painting in the 1980s, his work has developed in various artistic media. Generally, these are large-scale works accompanied by detailed titles. These are intended to indicate the visual content. They are works that are in constant dialogue between image and narrative. In 1997, with the project “Mistério no Bairro. O Famoso Caso do Maníaco da Caixa de Fósforos” (The Mystery of the Quarter. The famous case of the matchbox madman”), Riqué’s work takes a multimedia direction. Literature, drawing, painting, radio play, performance, cinema and video are now his forms of artistic expression. The projects move between “high” and “pop(ulary)” culture and are full of literary, dramatic and cinematic references. From 2000, Riqué realizes performance and fictional works with other artists. An extensive series of videos creates an audiovisual work with an austere and intimate profile that provokes reflection on different concepts. In recent projects such as those of the series ” A Direção do Vento Predominante” (The Direction of the Main Wind), charcoal drawings create a retro-futuristic atmosphere. Concepts of barrenness, solitude and silence are present amidst robust architectural forms. In constant change, his latest works are based on historical circumstances, in which literary and cinematic studies serve as a basis for fictionalization.

DRAWINGS BY VICTOR LEMA RIQUÉ, Copyright © 2019, GALERIE Z22, All rights reserved.

The project allows for various reflections, stimulated by the presentation of novel architectural forms accompanied or overlaid/interrupted by mini-texts or sentences like comic strips.

Sentences written backwards are intended to require the viewer to make an effort to understand what is written. A warning that something is not working properly.

Doubts arise in the face of the mysterious utopian desires of art and science that materialize in comic book speech bubbles. Confusing paths of an idealism full of good intentions, but with an unpredictable fate.

An intimidating architecture of art deco and futuristic character looks like a metropolitan scenography where the sentences are launched as compelling aphorisms. Who prescribes them? A corrupt and manipulative mayor addicted to Fake News and false promises, or an architect/poet/urban planner flirting with an ideal civilized world?

Does the observer’s effort deserve the help of a mirror to quickly understand what is written? Even with a mirror in his hand, he will sometimes understand the writing and sometimes not, when he finds that the sentence in one and the same speech bubble is written half right and half wrong. It makes no sense!

Finally, a large number of feminine athletic figures roam the scene. The artist calls them “recovered angels,” inspired in Hugo Simberg’s painting “the wounded angel” and the swimmer and Hollywood star Esther Williams. They are wounded figures that transform into these women, perhaps they are strong advocates of utopias and republics, as once Marianne, Italia Turrita or Columbia; they float/fly/circulate full of vitality within the multidimensional spaces in the painting as if they could be witnesses of victories and failures.

Opening:Tuesday, April 25, 2023, 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Exhibition dates: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 – Saturday, April 29, 2023