LUCAS SIMÕES: OTIUMmuitoOTIUM
by Oliver Basciano
In ancient Rome the word otium had an ambiguous meaning. It meant pause, but also a moment for reflection, or even laziness. Otium was not a wanton kind of laziness however, but laziness with purpose: a cerebral rest as a prelude to political activity. Otium is, as Cicero described, otium cum dignitate, idleness with dignity. Its antonym, negotium likewise meant both action and an involvement in public life. Working with poured concrete and welded steel, Lucas Simões’s sculptures stem from a series of visits the artist made to the excavations of Pompeii’s ancient leisure villas, places of otium on the outskirts of the ancient Italian city (c. I BC - I AD), in which the architecture was specifically created to provide space for relaxation and intellectual contemplation, a place to prepare the Roman elite for public life.
Blocks of contrasting material drape and wrap themselves around each...other; metal in a seductive embrace of pigmented concrete, concrete reclining over metal. The colours are calm and languid, recalling the faded frescos the artist saw at the Stabiae, one of the more spectacular of the villas he toured. In Sleepers, a series, there is a sense of Dionysian eroticism and sensuality. The metal plates curve and flick like a tongue, the smooth concrete hangs pendulously, as if the sculptures are rising up, stimulated, from their slumber. In a second body of work, Corpos de Prova, Simões returns to his use of paper as a sculptural material, the piles of writing material hanging, wedged between two opposing, moveable geometric blocks, taking on different forms depending on how the ballasts at either end are placed. This proposed kineticism evokes a sense of sociability, an Apollonian negotiation to how the viewer might live and relate to them. Negotium in action.
With his original architectural training the artist brings across the idea of design as an active agent: material possessing an ability to determine behaviour. (It is probably notable that Simões’s long-time muse, the concrete jungle of São Paulo, also catalyses extreme industriousness and enthusiastic hedonism.) The artist speaks of his sculpture in almost sentient terms, both products of desire and as machines in the production of desire. First he will sketch out a design, before reimagining this sketch on computer software and building up the moulds, often deviating intuitively from the original drawing. Within this process there are moments of potential, and moments of gratification: the sketch represents the possibility of something being in the world, the finished object the gratification of that desire (art making possessing far greater immediacy than architecture could ever provide). Moments of potential abound too in the finished sculptures: In Fenomenologia do Redondo (para Artemide) a series of stone bulges ooze out of an oxidized steel surface, perhaps about burst, perhaps to deflate sadly. In Dormente 9, a block of blue pigmented concrete sits precariously, hanging over one side, atop a steel armature. The artist returned to numerous paintings of resting and sleeping while making the show: O Sono, in which two pendulous mounds of concrete hang down from a steel support, takes its name from the Tarsila do Amaral’s 1928 lethargic landscape of palm trees. There is a painting too by Artemisia Gentileschi, the Allegory of Painting (c. 1620), which the artist was drawn to. A woman lies nude, reclining on the floor. A piece of textile wraps around her body, entwining her like the dance of materials Simões also employs. The woman seems to doze, her eyes closed, but she is also surrounded by painting materials, the moment of creative potential possible, or possibly past. Giorgio Agambem, the Italian theorist, imagines that the canvas is dreaming of its own creation, almost like Simões’s sketches dream of the sculptures they will become. Within sleep, the potential for action grows.
Questions of otium lie at the heart of our understanding art’s purpose. Or rather its ontological status, its potency. Now that they are here in the gallery, what do Simões sculptures do all day? Sat on the wall, looking at us looking at them. Are they at work, tasked with imparting wisdom, actors performing for us, their willing audience? Or are they languid beasts of leisure, secluded in their own world, whose pleasurable existence we are invited to enjoy vicariously. Surely the answer is both: their potency lying within the object as a discrete entity, but also the pause they provide us from the outside world. These sculptures are sleeper cells for action: the viewer, their witting accomplices. A moment of potential before we return to the ardours of life outside the gallery.
Lucas Simões [Catanduva, Brasil, 1980. Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil], has a Bachelor in Architecture and Urbanism from PUC-Campinas, Campinas, Brazil. Selected solo exhibitions: Durmientes, Galeria Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca, Spain [2021]; Drawing Tense, Blouin Division, Montreal, Canada [2021]; Awaiting Masses, Patron Projects, New York, USA [2019]; Ressaca, Casa Triângulo, São Paulo, Brazil [2018]; Corpos de Prova, Pasto Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina [2017]; White Lies, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, USA [2017] and Deserto, Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães, Recife, Brazil [2014] among others. Selected group exhibitions: Panta Rei, Anna Mara, Roma, Italy [2021]; Theory of Prose, Arsenal Contemporary Art New York, New York, USA [2021]; Experimentando Le Corbusier – Interpretações Contemporâneas do Modernismo, Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil [2019]; A Thousand Roaring Beasts: Display Devices for a Critical Modernity, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain [2017] and Mensagens de Uma Nova América, 10th Biennial of Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil [2015] among others. Awards: Prêmio Foco Art Rio [2013]; Salão de pequenos formatos da Amazônia – UNAMA [2010] and Prêmio Citi Novos Artistas [2009]. Public collections: Museu de Arte Contemporânea - USP, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil and Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil.
Entrada actualizada el el 06 may de 2022
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