"Sometimes in the afternoons a certain face

Behold us from the bottom of a mirror;

Art should be like that mirror

That reveals our own face to us."

Jorge Luís Borges, Poetic Art, in O Fazedor (1960)

 

Who draws tells stories. Invents, creates faces, dialogues with magic. He seeks new narratives escaping the obvious in search of novelty.

 

Drawing and constant practice for Paulo Vieira. With graphite, colored pencils, watercolor and paper he tells stories, changing realities in search of what is at the bottom of each image captured by his attentive gaze. The drawings created are many and daily. They are all loose papers that add up, revealing stories.

 

The Papers Avulsos exhibition features works by Paulo Vieira where drawing and painting appear in a fascinating mix. Exposure arises from daily practice. From the exercise of observation and discipline, the artist. His drawings "speak" of people who enter narratives as characters in stories. They have their own existence and remain stray, isolated. The man with the tie, in “Self-portrait”, as well as the man with the house on his back, in “The Tenant”, are alone, lost in their thoughts and occupying the foreground. Detached, they interact with their fears, their ghosts, their fantasies. The shades of gray, the plots and patterns in the background give the drawings a surprising density. In another work, the photo of a family is used by Paulo Vieira to express two different views on the same theme. The artist creates, through color and design, a prominent character from the family group that used to be uniform. With creative interventions, it makes the narrative less linear, more thought-provoking, less obvious.

 

The Girl with Gold Thread surprises by the beauty of the features, by the safety and level of awareness of the author when carrying out this work. How many possibilities are presented in the face of such an exciting image. The rigor of the form and the precision in the details stand out after the initial enchantment. But whoever observes was certainly lost by the different paths that drawing can take.
In the delicacy of the use of color and in the care with drawings, Paulo Vieira subtly speaks to us of loneliness, of inner life, of reinventing. For him, balance is often in disequilibrium, intuition has to be subjected to experience and images can create pitfalls. The design provides endless possibilities. It allows the critical eye to approach looking for deeper and deeper meanings. But it also shows us that beauty lies absolutely in the safe line, in the appropriate color, in the image captured by the experienced eye. The spectator is left with the task of telling another story after the moment of enjoyment. A story that will remain inside, powerful, because it is yours alone. Disturbing like a fairy tale.

 

Isabel Sanson Portella

PhD in History and Art Criticism