(this page was last updated in July 2016)
[pipa2011: 1070]
São Paulo, Brazil, 1978,
Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
Represented by Gallery Vermelho.
PIPA 2011 Finalist.
PIPA 2010 nominee.
André Komatsu’s sculptures and installations employ architectural and design forms to critique prevalent social orders. A recurrent motif in his oeuvre, the concrete wall symbolizes the stagnant bureaucracy and roadblocks that create social imbalance, while his appropriation of modernist forms highlights the failures of idealism promulgated by past art-historical movements.
In 2015, Komatsu had a solo exhibition at the Brazilian Embassy in Rome, coinciding with his participation in the group exhibition ‘É Tanta Coisa que Não Cabe Aqui’ at the Brazilian Pavillion in the 56th Venice Biennale.
Video produced by Matrioska Filmes exclusively for PIPA 2011:
My work consists of a research about the comprehension that involves the art field, as well as, its insertion on the daily life of the city. Maybe, the artistic work is only a way an instrument to emphasize new forms of perception.
As I walk through the city, repeating everyday the same streets and ways, the familiar sites awake different perceptions. On literature, this situation is described as “epiphany” (the moment when the perception really comprehends/understands everything that is usual, creating a new vision of it generating new possibilities of questioning what has already been seen). The search for this new reality can be orientated to any fragment, as well as, to a group of facts, that can be trivial, like walking, watching TV and so on. Nothing stands still, only in rhythmus and different velocities (reference to the atom movement). Everything moves constantly inside a cycle of transformation affected by time and uses until its complete consummation.
To transform: 1. to give a new form, aspect or character to; to change, to modify.
2. To convert 3. To change the state of something, position, condition, shape, etc.
To construct: 1. to create a structure; to erect 3. To conceive.
Construction: 1. Act, art of constructing
Perception: . Act, art or faculty of perceiving.
Perceive: 1 . To obtain knowledge of, through the senses. 2. To realize,
tomend, to note.
The representation of constructive processes and constructions in the André Komatsu´s work always contains ruins and the desconstruction idea. One of the usual procedures of the artist is to collect rubbish from the streets, dumps-cart and garbage cans, and to attribute a new function for what was dejection, either to use it in three-dimensional and installations production, either to take it as support of architecture drawings. Generally, the parts incorporate, invert and return as a problem the characteristics of its supports and referentials. Therefore, fragments of masonry receive contours of pencil from an imperfect wall or from a high standard building, and the house model, with the wooden sidewalls on the ground, receives a stack of gravels. In this kind of dialectic of the building site, to construct presume the falling of structures. And what remains of the demolition get back to raw material in works that comment the ways of use and occupation of public spaces and particular terrains in the city. The artist´s show at the Cultural Center São Paulo transposes to the exhibit area the beginning of constructing to destroy, and vice versa. “Kamikaze” (“or for all those that had believed”) represents the impact of the collision between two tipically brazilian toy cars (called “rolimãs”) by a stack of cardboard, lath, plastic bottles, etc. The “shock” between the cars guided by the feet becomes a purely visual onomatopoeia, not-linguistics: the CRASHHH! from the comics balloons, with the wreckage. Built in the crossing between two ramps of the space, the work restricts the visitors´circulation and insinuates a state of exception, who knows, the war atmosphere as the title suggests. The belligerence is sufocated also in the voids that cut the clinical luminosity of “Alasca”, installation where Komatsu builts a rough shelter with the asepsis of the “white cube” in its maximum, what, vice versa, confers military meaning to the generic space devoted to the art. In fact, the bunker is a cube as construction, white, of concrete blocks, but it is also the place of protection and attack, with spy-holes on the four lateral faces, installed in an illuminated room until the saturation of the fluorecent light. José Augusto Ribeiro is a art critic and master´s student in Art History at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo. He integrates the Center of Research in Brazilian Art of the Department of Visual Arts of the School and currently he works in the Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art project, co-ordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A Marginal Order Base hierárquica [Hierarchical Basis] (2011–) is a subtly site-specific work that André Komatsu has mounted in various countries, each time using common drinking glasses, wineglasses and construction materials readily available in that locale to set up an installation consisting of various concrete blocks stacked atop drinking glasses that are apparently cheap and yet strong enough to hold up under the weight, while splintered pieces of a wine glass bear witness to the fragility of its elegance. Many of the titles chosen by the artist are charged with Foucaultian resonances, and Base hierárquica, although it is not one of the most explicit ones in this sense, is certainly among those that best exemplify the way that Michel Foucault’s theory of the microphysics of power is not only at play in the titles, but lies at the core of the artist’s concerns and even, it could be said, underpins his worldview. The discourse on power and on latent or active social conflicts permeates the materials he uses, influences his choice, and in a certain way constitutes the true raw material of André Komatsu’s installations. In this sense, the artist’s recurrent use of cast-off fragments, leftovers, and scraps found in dumpsters, since at least the time of the action-performance Projeto – Casa/entulho [Project – House/Rubble] (2002), also reveals the desire to subvert the values conventionally attributed to the materials themselves and, more generally, to the elements of everyday life – thus instating, to cite the title of another of his artworks, a Nova Ordem [New Order] (2009). The works of the series Três vidros [Three Panes of Glass] (2012), featured in this exhibition, emphasize the value of fragments, since they are the basis for constructing modernist architectures, isolated on absolutely flat lots, in perfect keeping with modernist precepts. The transformation of icons of the golden age of Brazilian architecture into conglomerations of debris and scraps can be interpreted as a denunciation of the violence implicit in the constructive process, or of the unique qualities of this architecture, whose democratic dreams were shipwrecked on the shoals of its progressive approximation with the social, political and economic elites, which it ultimately validates and preserves behind its clean and simple forms. These are not the only artworks in the exhibition that are born from the tension between natural, fragmented and apparently disordered elements on the one hand, and precise and rigorous forms on the other. But this opposition is in a certain way illusory, as demonstrated by the crooked, raw tree branch that nevertheless fits perfectly as a leg for a precisely square tabletop (Cooperativa antagônica [Antagonistic Cooperative], 2013), or even the image of a tree trunk printed on an anonymous, simple sheet of paper, which nearly seems to be part of the wooden beam that secures it against the wall, at its top (Campo aberto 4 [Open Field 4]). With this tension between opposite poles (natural and artificial / geometric and organic / raw and finished, etc.), André Komatsu’s artworks constitute open fields, as though they were yet about to take place in front of the viewer, instead of being presented in an already finished state. By directly or indirectly resorting to the technique of anamorphosis (Anamorfose sistemática 3 e 4 [Systematic Anamorphosis 3 and 4]), the artist emphasizes the need for an interpretation which is political or in any case metaphoric for the exhibition as a whole. The key for the comprehension of an anamorphosis is almost always a change of vantage point, a displacement that allows us to look at things from another point of view, allowing us to see that what appeared obscure and abstract is in fact perfectly logical and understandable, and this is precisely what the works featured here require: a change in one’s point of view, the condition of being open to a different reading, to be understood in another way. The bricks, the architectures and the clocks that converge on André Komatsu’s artistic universe are, beyond all appearances, invitations to social resistance. A work such as Time Out (2013), for example, in which a stack of bond paper prevents the hands of a clock from following their course, is above all a social and political manifesto. The metaphorically charged act of stopping time would be impossible for a single sheet of paper, and the power of this artwork, beyond its poetic beauty, consists precisely in demonstrating the revolutionary power that springs from the union of individual forces, able to achieve otherwise impossible gestures. And this same charge appears in the work which – due to how it escapes from the show’s prevailing logic of tension – can be considered as the master key for understanding this exhibition: Esquadria disciplinar / Ordem marginal [Disciplinary Framework / Marginal Order] (2013). Apparently, the contraposition between different orders is absent here: the two groups of plates, the second one resulting from the “leftovers” of the first, both obey the same rigorous and deductive logic. But some plates are still left over, and return, like a kind of virus, infringing on the bidimensionality that seems to dominate the work, jutting out from the wall and proposing, in the words of the artist, “another model of coexistence.” In André Komatsu’s open universe, the very concept of order is, one could say, marginal, rather than central. Order, as it is conventionally known, is just one of the possible ways in which the world can be manifested – and it is not necessarily the most easily understood way. It is enough to take a step, to look at things from another angle, and what at first sight appeared ordered can be revealed as disordered, what looked chaotic can, ultimately, be seen in its flawless logic. – Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, 2013
Everything excessively white, a comparable whiteness – by the artist induction – to an igloo projected in straight lines, stuck into the snow of the Alaska´s infinite landscape. From inside the shelter, where nobody enters, would only be possible to see the exterior through the openings, made to the positioning and the firearms aiming. Without evidence of conflit, under a deaf noise, the war architecture seems to accomodate well in an art gallery. Or not, it would be the art at risk, under fire-friend target? If yes, the exposition is completely dedicated to those that had believed. – José Augusto Ribeiro
Education
-BA in Fine Arts 1998/ 2002, Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, FAAP, Brazil.
Solo Exhibitions
2015
– “White Noise”, Palazzo Pamphilj , Galleria Cândido Portinari, Rome, Italy.
2014
– “Insustentável Paraíso”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “André Komatsu”, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy.
2013
-“Corpo Dócil”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
2011
-“Pinta 2011″, Art Projects, London , UK.
– ARCO 2011 , Solo Projects, Madrid, Spain.
2010
– “Acaso por intenção”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Concreto/Periódico”, Natalie Seroussi, Paris, France.
2009
– “Soma Neutra”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
2007
– “Quando ramos são subtraídos”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
2006
– “Projeto Bolsa Pampulha”, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– “Temporada de Projetos 2006″, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Bolsa Pampulha 2005-2006″, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– “Programa de Exposições 2005-2006″, Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP], São Paulo, Brazil.
Group Exhibitions
2015
– “É Tanta Coisa que Não Cabe Aqui”, 56ª edição da Bienal Internacional de Arte de Veneza, Venice, Italy.
– “Encruzilhada”, Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “O Museu que há de vir”, Fórum Eugénio de Almeida, Évora, Portugal.
– “Open Plan”, SP Arte 2015, Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo, São Paulo, Brazil.
2014
– “Singularidades/Anotações: Rumos Artes Visuais”, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Do Valongo à Favela”, Museu de Arte do Rio [MAR], Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “Experimentando Espaços 2″, Museu da Casa Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Beyond the Superquare”, Bronx Museum, New York, USA.
– “Dispositivos para um mundo (im)possível (Roesler Hotel #25)”, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Um Olhar sobre a Coleção”, Galeria Hideo Kobayashi, Centro Cultural Usiminas, Ipatinga, Brazil.
2013
– “Escavar o Futuro”, Fundação Clóvis Salgado, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– “Interruption: The 30th edition of the Ljubljana Biennial of Grafic Arts”, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
– “In Lines and Realignments”, Simon Lee Gallery, London, UK.
– “Blind Field”, Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, USA.
– “Future Generation Art Prize @Venice”, Pallazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice, Italy.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para Artes Plásticas”, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– “El Arte Contemporaneo de la X Bienal Monterrey FEMSA”, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Cidade do México, México.
– “O Abrigo e o Terreno. Arte e Sociedade no Brazil. I”, Museu de Arte do Rio [MAR], Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “Blind Field”, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, USA.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para Artes Plásticas”, Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto [MARP], Ribeirão Preto, Brazil.
2012
– “Colapso”, A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “Future Generation Art Prize 2012 [21 Shortlisted Artists]”, Pinchukartcentre, Kiev, Ukraine.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para Artes Plásticas”, Palácio do Comércio, Associação Comercial de Maceió, Maceió, Brazil.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para Artes Plásticas”, Fortaleza São José de Macapá, Macapá, Brazil.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para artes plásticas”, Centro Cultural Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
– “Prêmio CNI/SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para artes plásticas”, Casa França Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan: América Latina y el Caribe”, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, Puerto Rico.
– “The Peripatetic School: itinerant drawing from Latin America”, Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colômbia.
– “La escuela peripatética: dibujo itinerante de América Latina”, Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain.
– “Sextanisqatsi: desordem habitável”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey [MARCO], México.
– X Bienal Monterrey FEMSA, Monterrey, México.
2011
– “Finalistas do PIPA 2011″, Museum of Modern Art (MAM RJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “El Ranchito”, Matadero Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
– “An Other Place”, Galerie Lelong, Nova York, USA.
– “Contra a Parede”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Os Primeiros Dez Anos”, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Nova Escultura Brasileira: heranças e diversidades”, Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “Caos e Efeito”, Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “The Peripatetic School: Itinerant Drawing from Latin America, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art [MIMA], Middlesbrough, UK.
– “The Peripatetic School: itinerant drawing from Latin America”, Drawing Room, London, UK.
– “Finalistas PIPA 2011″, Museum of Modern Art [MAM RJ], Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “8ª Bienal do Mercosul: Ensaios de Geopoéticas”, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
– “Caos e Efeito”, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Um Outro Lugar”, Museum of Modern Art [MAM SP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Ustedes e Nosotros”, Centro Cultural de España, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala.
– “The natural order of things”, Max Wigram Gallery, London, UK.
2010
– “EN OBRAS | Arte y arquitectura en la Coleção Teixeira de Freitas”, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes [TEA], Ilhas Canárias
– “Ponto de Equilíbrio”, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Paralela: A contemplação do mundo”, Liceu de Artes e Ofício, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “20 anos do Programa de Exposições”, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Brazil.
– “A sombra do futuro: especulações por fazer”, Oi Futuro, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– “Quem tem medo?”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Pra Começo de Século”, Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte Contemporânea, Fortaleza, Brazil.
– “Para ser Construídos”, Museu de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon [MUSAC], Castilla y Léon, Spain.
2009
– “Obsession: Contemporary Art from the Lodeveans Collection”, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
– “Por Aqui”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “D |ESTE| LADO”, Instituto Goethe, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “AFTER UTOPIA”, Museo Centro Pecci, Prato, Italy.
– “7ª Bienal do Mercosul: Grito e Escuta”, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
– “When Lives Become Form: Creative Power from Brazil”, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA.
– “Artérias e Capilares”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Vértice”, Galeria Millan, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Exposição de Verão”, Galeria Silvia Cintra+Box4, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– “When Lives Become Form: Creative Power from Brazil”, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan.
2008
– “When Lives Become Form: Creative Power from Brazil”, Brazilian Embassy Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art [MOT], Tokyo, Japan.
– “4ª Paralela”, Liceu de Artes e Ofícios, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Seja marginal”, seja herói, Galerie GP & N Vallois & Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris, France.
– “Oriente/Ocidente”, 100 anos da Imigração Japonesa, Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Verbo 2008″, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Arte.Brasil-Japão. Moderno e Atual”, Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC USP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Laços do Olhar”, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Quando vidas se tornam forma”, Museum of Modern Art [MAM SP], São Paulo, Brazil.
2006
– “This is not a love song”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Coletiva Programa de Exposições”, Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Rumos Itaú Cultural Artes Plásticas 2005-2006″, Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil.
2005
– “Vorazes, Grotescos e Malvados”, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Verbo”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
2003
– “Modos de Usar”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Arte contemporânea e política no movimento dos sem tetos do Centro (MSTC)”, Rua Prestes Maia, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Giroflexxxx”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “A Casa Onírica”, VI Semana Fernando Furlanetto, Espaço Cultural Fernando Arrigucci, São João da Boa Vista, Brazil.
2002
– “Plural”, Gabinete de Arte Regina Pinho de Almeida, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Desdobramentos-Desenho,Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC]”, Americana, Brazil.
– “Marrom”, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Genius Loci: O Espírito do Lugar”, Circuito Vila Buarque de Educação e Cultura, São Paulo, Brazil.
2001
– “Primeiro Circuito Noturno das Artes”, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil.
– XXXIII Anual De Artes, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado [FAAP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Políticas Pessoais”, Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC], Americana, Brazil.
– “Casa da Grazi”, Espaço Cultura, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Figura Impressa”, Adriana Penteado Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brazil.
– “São Paulo/ Universidades”, Euroart-Castelli, São Paulo, Brazil.
2000
– “Fumaça 1 [Happening]”, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado [FAAP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “XXXII Anual de Artes”, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado [FAAP], São Paulo, Brazil.
– “Zananocio”, Ateliê Maurício Cardoso, São Paulo, Brazil.
1998
– XXXI Anual de Artes, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado [FAAP], São Paulo, Brazil.
Awards
2011
– Prêmio CNI-SESI Marcantonio Vilaça para Artes Plásticas, Brazil.
– Illy SustainArt Award, ARCO 2011, Madrid, Spain.
2010
-Residence, El Ranchito, Matadero, Madrid, Spain.
2009
– Residence, Bronx Museum, New York, USA.
2005
– Prêmio Bolsa Pampulha, Museu da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– 17° Salåo de Arte da Praia Grande [Primeiro Prêmio], São Paulo, Brazil.
– 32ª Anual da FAAP[Terceiro Prêmio Bolsa], São Paulo, Brazil.
Collections
– Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
– Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), Middlesbrough, UK.
– Bronx Museum, Nova York, USA.
– CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain.
– Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro (MAM RJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
– Museum of Modern Art [MOMA], New York, USA.
– Fundação Clóvis Salgado, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
– TATE Modern, London, UK.
Coleções Privadas / Public Collections
– Fundação Serralves (Comodato), Porto, Portugal.
Video produced by Matrioska Filmes exclusively for PIPA 2010:
Related Posts
- "Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes" presents a selection of significant works by contemporary Latin American and Australian artists
- André Komatsu participates in Aichi Triennale 2022
- Last days to see "DECATEGORIZED Artists From Brazil"
- Luiz Teixeira de Freitas' collection on display
- PIPA nominated artists and finalists at Frieze Los Angeles 2019
- In Italy, 'Knife in the flesh' brings up political complexity from Brazil
- “BRAZIL. Knife in the flesh" brings 30 Brazilian artists to Milan
- SP-Arte reaches its 14th edition
- The hidden potential of accidents themes "Horizonte de Sucesos"
- Brazilian contemporary art in focus in "Ação e Reação"
