Umbra Natural

The heart of our ancestors never tires of reminding us that every shadow present in nature carries with it a lesson about the wonder of life. As an intrinsic part of nature, the forest symbolises the human desire to venture into the obscure and enigmatic world of the unconscious. The forest is a language, a thousand tongues whispering, a thousand shadows shimmering.

In the vastness of the forest, Cássio Vasconcellos and Daniel Mattar invite us to an aesthetic and existential dance between Photography and Painting, surprising us with shadows and glimpses of a lost paradise, personifying the creative and fertile grace in nature. Here, the forest rises powerful and insurmountable in a silent shout for a global, personal, and urgent transformation of the Earth, in which the artists seek different ways of reconnecting with nature. They know that embodying the grandeur of nature and the cosmos is a way of seeking answers to the fragility of the human being.

Cássio Vasconcellos brings the series "Viagem Pitoresca Pelo Brasil" (Picturesque Journey Through Brazil) based on the true story of the artistic and scientific expeditions that took place in Brazil during the 19th century, in which art and science joined forces in the mission to map Brazilian territory and show it to the old world. As a result, Brazil became one of the few countries in the Americas to have such a rich and instigating record, sometimes represented as a paradise, sometimes beautiful and fascinating, sometimes fearful and sublime. Advocating for a new photographic lexicon, Vasconcellos challenges photography as a document and makes each image the key to another image, revealing the exuberant tropical beauty and the fragility of the virgin forest. In this way, while paying homage to his great-great-grandfather, the botanist Ludwig Riedel, who was part of the Langsdorff expedition (1825), the photographer embarks on an archaeological adventure in search of answers about the ideas of reality, photography, self-creation, and truth, exploring camouflage in all its layers. "Truth is its gift to deceive", as Caetano Veloso says, and in the face of its delight, we can only pretend to believe it to postpone the world's imminent end.

In addition to the millenary softness of Cássio's rainforest, Daniel Mattar's technicolour vision brings together images-photo-paintings under fresh paint, which reflects not only his sensory and cognitive experience of the concept of the natural but also a powerful perspective of positioning oneself in life. This thinking is translated plastically through the collection of paint tubes and the use of pigments to colour the apparently artificial, creating works that are almost like spectres of our existence. By stumbling across the cracks in photography and challenging the specular play of appearances, Mattar's works hover in a hybrid of colours, sometimes intensely natural and sometimes electrically artificial, from the splendour of emerald to the brutality of burning ember to extend into natural shadows, bringing a landscape that is as sentimental as it is tragic.

With Cássio and Daniel, we are taken to a submerged, imperfect and poetic gallery, where the explosive nature surprises and fascinates us, being a point of convergence between the subjectivity of the artists and the alertness of the viewer, demanding a slow, conscious and questioning gaze. Encounters like these are precious because of their unique capacity for dialogue, for drawing attention to the real that echoes in the shadows. Perhaps this is an excellent moment of poetic and silent resistance that, by interrupting the vertiginous cycle of time, will help us face the vastness and chaos of the world. It's impossible not to be surprised by the shock of the brute beauty of the works and remain indifferent to the forest that pulses restlessly in the face of the reverse of humanity. Daring to dive into reality is the wonder of this exhibition.

Ângela Berlinde, 2023