AntonioDIAS
Antonio Dias. A Collection
02.2017–04.2017
Antonio Dias. A Collection
02.2017–04.2017
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Antonio Dias, Installation view, A collection, Fondazione Marconi, Milan, 2017
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Antonio Dias
Chinese monument, 1968/69
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 290 cm
Chinese monument, 1968/69
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 290 cm
Press Release
Antonio Dias
A Collection
Opening: February 21, 2017
February 22 – April 14, 2017
A Collection
Opening: February 21, 2017
February 22 – April 14, 2017
Recognised today as one of Brazil’s leading contemporary artists, Antonio Dias presented his first exhibition Anywhere is my Land at Studio Marconi in 1969.
Further shows followed in 1971 and 1987, until 1995, when Giorgio Marconi presented the last exhibition of the Brazilian artist’s work – the same works as those in the current exhibition.
Born in the northeast of Brazil, Dias has a dynamic, ironic temperament, at times sharp and provocative.
He was a member of a number of avant-garde groups before departing for Europe.
As a gesture of open opposition to the military dictatorship established in Brazil, he moved first to France, where he was able to remain until 1968, due to the painting award he received at the 1965 Paris Biennial.
He then chose Milan as his adopted city. In the years that followed, he became a member of the international art scene, particularly in Milan itself, frequenting the circle of artists involved in the arte povera movement, among them Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini and Gilberto Zorio.
Dias’s art has always dealt with rupture: he has addressed various themes in the form of conceptual works that are essentially impossible to label.
They incorporate a wide range of techniques and are influenced by various artistic movements, such as pop art and minimalism.
The group of works from the Marconi collection presented in this exhibition are from the period 1968 to 1972, and offer a precise and coherent insight into the artistic research of the young Dias, whose signature style was to use an extremely restricted pictorial-graphic code and to investigate the nature of signs, the categories of the imagination, and the uneven and discontinuous manner in which the perceptual dynamics of the work were received by the artist and those viewing it.
Further shows followed in 1971 and 1987, until 1995, when Giorgio Marconi presented the last exhibition of the Brazilian artist’s work – the same works as those in the current exhibition.
Born in the northeast of Brazil, Dias has a dynamic, ironic temperament, at times sharp and provocative.
He was a member of a number of avant-garde groups before departing for Europe.
As a gesture of open opposition to the military dictatorship established in Brazil, he moved first to France, where he was able to remain until 1968, due to the painting award he received at the 1965 Paris Biennial.
He then chose Milan as his adopted city. In the years that followed, he became a member of the international art scene, particularly in Milan itself, frequenting the circle of artists involved in the arte povera movement, among them Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini and Gilberto Zorio.
Dias’s art has always dealt with rupture: he has addressed various themes in the form of conceptual works that are essentially impossible to label.
They incorporate a wide range of techniques and are influenced by various artistic movements, such as pop art and minimalism.
The group of works from the Marconi collection presented in this exhibition are from the period 1968 to 1972, and offer a precise and coherent insight into the artistic research of the young Dias, whose signature style was to use an extremely restricted pictorial-graphic code and to investigate the nature of signs, the categories of the imagination, and the uneven and discontinuous manner in which the perceptual dynamics of the work were received by the artist and those viewing it.
The works on display are characterised by graphic-style, black and white geometric painting, designed to reduce the elements to their bare minimum.
Dias developed a new, not easily understood conceptual language, partly compensated by the immediacy of words, used according to Magritte’s principle: “In a picture, words have the same substance as images.”
In fact, in Dias’s art words have no denotative value as images; on the contrary, they are dispersed and their meaning dissolved. Even the titles of the paintings are treated like particles: none of them represents itself. And if at first viewers are led to believe there is indeed an intimate, specific meaning, they soon realise that the words taken together lead to a startling revelation: they are all false.
As in Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games, where words do not function as strict labels denoting objects, because this is merely one of the many functions of language, one of an infinite number of possible language games, Dias in his turn is not interested in the semantic origin of paintings, and no single text for visual truth exists. Painting and words distributed on the canvas are non-images, particles without form.
Let it Absorb, Chinese Monument, Environment for the Prisoner, The Incomplete Biography, Do it Yourself, Desert (Stone) are just some of the titles of the works on show: phrases that lie between the enigmatic and the insignificant; a ready-made based on advertising jargon or political slogans, in which the word-image association is disconnected and confusing.
Yet there is a leitmotiv running through Dias’s art, a possible added value that can orient the way we perceive his work.
For instance, with regard to The Tripper series, the artist himself has explained that the idea for these works dates back to 1968, when he had the inspiration of making use of the public’s preconceived idea about his painting.
He had noted that whenever he presented paintings containing white spots on a black background, the only image the public saw was a starry sky.
Struck by the desire to have every observer see different images in his work, Dias decided to study the mental dynamics that trigger the mechanism that makes viewers see the same thing. And so, after painting an infinite number of dots in white paint on a black background, he began to plot a route by joining some of them with a white line, thus creating a kind of journey that everyone would interpret in their own way; one where a single image gives rise to a variable image, a field open to entirely different interpretations and meanings.
“To trigger in the viewer the mechanism of visual analogies, interior projections, or analytical reasoning: this is the continuous, cerebral movement that interests me. The reason for my choice doesn’t matter, I’m not the traveller.” (Antonio Dias, 1995)
Dias developed a new, not easily understood conceptual language, partly compensated by the immediacy of words, used according to Magritte’s principle: “In a picture, words have the same substance as images.”
In fact, in Dias’s art words have no denotative value as images; on the contrary, they are dispersed and their meaning dissolved. Even the titles of the paintings are treated like particles: none of them represents itself. And if at first viewers are led to believe there is indeed an intimate, specific meaning, they soon realise that the words taken together lead to a startling revelation: they are all false.
As in Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games, where words do not function as strict labels denoting objects, because this is merely one of the many functions of language, one of an infinite number of possible language games, Dias in his turn is not interested in the semantic origin of paintings, and no single text for visual truth exists. Painting and words distributed on the canvas are non-images, particles without form.
Let it Absorb, Chinese Monument, Environment for the Prisoner, The Incomplete Biography, Do it Yourself, Desert (Stone) are just some of the titles of the works on show: phrases that lie between the enigmatic and the insignificant; a ready-made based on advertising jargon or political slogans, in which the word-image association is disconnected and confusing.
Yet there is a leitmotiv running through Dias’s art, a possible added value that can orient the way we perceive his work.
For instance, with regard to The Tripper series, the artist himself has explained that the idea for these works dates back to 1968, when he had the inspiration of making use of the public’s preconceived idea about his painting.
He had noted that whenever he presented paintings containing white spots on a black background, the only image the public saw was a starry sky.
Struck by the desire to have every observer see different images in his work, Dias decided to study the mental dynamics that trigger the mechanism that makes viewers see the same thing. And so, after painting an infinite number of dots in white paint on a black background, he began to plot a route by joining some of them with a white line, thus creating a kind of journey that everyone would interpret in their own way; one where a single image gives rise to a variable image, a field open to entirely different interpretations and meanings.
“To trigger in the viewer the mechanism of visual analogies, interior projections, or analytical reasoning: this is the continuous, cerebral movement that interests me. The reason for my choice doesn’t matter, I’m not the traveller.” (Antonio Dias, 1995)