Andre Poli
The work of André Poli (Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1966) has from its beginnings two fundamental expressive means in its poetic and discursive projection: painting and sculpture. Poli cultivates a painting of abstract language where there are also elements of the new figuration. Works of large format that set out a reflection on the languages and mechanisms of representation used by contemporary culture. This idea was already displayed in the exhibition "André Poli. Monochromatics" (Millan Gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1998), but above all in the series of his individual exhibition "Paisagens" (Llorens Artigas Foundation, Barcelona, Spain 2003-04). In both projects the artist was inspired by the classic and romantic painting of the 19th century, in its pictorial strategies, in its environments and landscapes, in its interiors and exteriors, emphasizing a sharp work with color through blurring techniques, superimposing several very fine paints layers (as, for example, at the series ‘Figuras’ contemplated is the last mentioned show). The effect is a transparency that erases the contours and margins of objects and representations in the background-figure relationship of the pictorial space. This practice produces in the retina of the observer an impression of expansive, diffuse depth, capable of enveloping the gaze in timeless atmospheres. Works as seen in the series Monochromatics, representing faces like wrapped in colorful mists, with closed eyes, in which the oneiric element is an essential part of its narrative.
On the other hand, the artist has developed an intense sculptural career, especially in recent years, rooted in the new trends of design as a tool for applied arts. In this territory object sculpture and installation sculpture are the most used expressive medium and experimental material support. Here he highlights a sculptural vision that, from the poetic point of view, relates both abstraction resources, as well as expressions of informalist art. It is an abstract-informalist work very interested in the treatment of light, reliefs on the plane and its relation to space. Here, like in Poli’s pictorial production, research and reflection on the language of sculpture has a great role. The act of experimentation with the sculptural material is remarkable, producing surfaces on works made of polished black resin that acquire an iridescent shine. A brightness, a light, that emerging from the same work seems to illuminate the slightly hilly surfaces of the sculptures, creating visual tours rich in details and coming out of their invisibility, in order to create imaginative atmospheres and sensations that reveal a world of perceptions of an accentuated subjective intensity. This is the feeling you have when you look straight ahead or from any other angle to sculptures such as Totken Plan Green # 1, or Flux # 1 (both from 2019). They highlight, without any mediation, a discharge of the of the light’s physical magnitude on the viewer's gaze projected by the sculptural body’s black surface. This work with light and matter focuses also, from another perspective and with other colors, on the space created between the sculpture and the wall where it hangs. It is a sculpture that in the manner of minimal art, investigates the relationship between the sculptural object, space and its perception by our sensibility. Sculptures with a mysterious visual beauty that imply the spectator’s perception as the ultimate space of its reflections.
