It is an earthy tone, almost reddish, of the mixture of black, white and Indian that weaves the skin color of the riverside people of Ilha do Combu, in Pará. modest but ingenious. Free on the balconies, the children from there sometimes play with the dogs, sometimes they plunge into the river under the high sun. From this coexistence with the Amazon community, the driving force for the plastic artist Ramon Martins could materialize and exhibit Extração, his new individual exhibition at the Movimento Gallery. The curatorship bears the signature of Ricardo Kimaid Jr.

 

Participating in Street River 2017, a festival that invited several Brazilian artists to paint the island's riverside residences, provided Ramon with his first experience in the Amazon. There, the instincts of a nature lover who left the metropolis of São Paulo to live in a place and dedicate himself calmly to the arts, was sharpened.

 

Always present in their works around the world, women with Japanese features gave way to children from Pará and their slightly indigenous faces. This familiar nuance, until then little explored by the artist's works, as well as the presence of male characters, pulsates vigorously in Extraction.

 

One of the larger paintings features the young Danielle Farias and her parrot Drico, who exchanged wildlife and companions who fly over the island to be domesticated and live with a family of humans.

 

Ramon equipped himself with brushes and paint to transform photos of himself and friends who had been on the trip into paintings. For this, he resorted to the technique he has been developing: the exercise of collecting fragments of environments wherever he goes and using them as a basis for the works. The fragments taken directly from the wall generate, at first, an abstraction laden with memory and the artist's intimate interest in transforming something momentary into permanent. Then, the abstraction dialogues with the painting of riverine characters who receive fairy colors, such as fluorescent orange and hot pink, inserted in the scenes to emphasize the vivid, beautiful and so Brazilian aspect of Pará.

 

And that is how riverside children like Suzane, Victor Hugo, Fernando and their parents, uncles and cousins ​​leave Ilha do Combu, 10 minutes by boat from Belém, rarely noticed by the local authorities, to the world. Human beings initially portrayed by cameras and then immortalized by Ramon's features.

 

Ramon Martins was born in 1981 in the city of São Paulo, SP, but was raised in Minas Gerais. He holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Escola de Arte Guignard, from the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG) and specializes in paintings, drawings and muralism. In 2016, he painted the mural considered the largest in the world during the third edition of Vulica Brasil, in Minsk, Belarus (formerly Belarus). He has already exhibited his works at fairs such as Art Basel and Scope Miami Beach, both in the United States. It includes collections from institutions such as the Masp (Museum of Art of São Paulo), the MAM (Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro) and the Museum of Abolition, in Recife, PE.

 

Débora Lopes