Iuri Sarmento

Solange Farkas, Director and Curator of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil-
Relays, overlapping, perspectives. Lush in color and symbolic reference, Iuri Sarmento´s work invites us to visit the Baroque art, now nurtured by new memories and coated with a touch of pop art. Born in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, the artist, who now lives and works in Salvador, first exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art in Bahia, Brazil, in 1999. After investigating for years and after having gone through many experiences, including the fashion field, he appears to present his unknown work, “Reinvented Baroque”.

In his paintings, Iuri practice, almost gradually, the transition from the sensuality of colors and textures to a picture which refers to the history of art, mixed with his personal experiences. In the rich Barroque imagination of his works, the technique of making porcelain, tiles and embroidery are present, some of them stamped with the image of the blue and white tiles of Portuguese Baroque or with pictorial fragments of universal painting icons.

His paintings are true collage. Its Pop-Baroque compositions praise the excess and saturation. He joins the juxtaposition of unlikely colors, a myriad of different textures and details – bright and opaque stripes and balls, flowers and geometric shapes – an exceptional vocabulary of pictorial effects.

Each of the works exhibited by Iuri raises unique plastic issues. In some of them, the artist allows to disclose his passion for ornaments and his ability to combine geometric and organic shapes: ornamental tiles and bars strolling among his pictures, full of Baroque and Christian connotations.

His work investigates the use of the human body, fashion and beauty as aesthetic elements. His pictures shows a thorough job, rich in color and details, forming a hybrid language between fashion and sculpture, characteristic of his artistic productions.

Despite referring to the Baroque, Iuri´s work has strong contemporary art characteristics due to the use of colors, forms and information. The symbolic density of the artist comes to shock the audience, but at the same time, is responsible for its noticeable projection in the arts circuit.