I look up the directions to go to André Komatsu’s studio. It is located in an area of Sao Paulo I’ve never been to before. There’s a football match the same evening I visit and the atmosphere in the streets is kind of raucous. Arriving at the place, a piece of paper informs me that the bell is broken and that I should knock on the garage door. I enter a huge space that resembles a warehouse. The garage door closes behind me and I meet André and the artists he shares his studio with. The place is covered with works of art and projects in progress.
We start looking at André’s portfolio and he explains how he came to working with performance, then architectural pieces, turning them into drawings and returning again to objects and installations. I am fascinated by the videos of his performances and the way in which they actualise and rethink the space they take place in.
In
West or until where the sun can reach (2006), André walks in the city of Sao Paulo, holding a compass and heading West until he encounters an obstacle in his way. When there appears a wall he does not manage to climb over, the performance comes to its end. The restrictions of urban structures and the challenges they impose on us, is of great relevance for a city like Sao Paulo.
Another of André’s works is
Paisagem (2005). A piece of wall found on the streets serves as ground for a drawing of a building. One immediately feels that the piece of facade might once have formed part of this drawn edifice. Suggesting ideas and potential pasts of this found segment of concrete,
Paisagem is a way of rethinking and expanding the notion of the ready-made in a humourous way.
Mim Tarzan você Jane (2003) also deals with architecture and built structures. Using found materials, André built a tree house in the yard of Galeria Vermelho, inviting visitors to climb up into. Here, one could experience the view of the city that is usually blocked by a high security wall surrounding the gallery terrain – as it is usually the case with private properties in Sao Paulo. This elevated tree house reminds of a place where children would play and offers a new perspective on the relation between inside and outside, constructed barriers and the potentiality to controvert them.
I like André’s references to art history, the conceptual background of his works and the discussion of the fetishisation of art objects. In a very interesting and manifold manner, he explores the role of people in urban spaces and means to challenge established power systems. He deals with Sao Paulo as urban hub and relates to other metropolises around the world. Komatsu addresses issues the international art discourse engages with, and does so in a humourous and reflective way.
We order Pizza and continue talking. André tells me about his projects in Europe planned for next year and about his participation in Paralela 2010, the parallel art fair to the Sao Paulo Bienal. I go to see the exhibition a week later and recognise a waterfall of concrete bricks that I had seen in André’s studio a week before.
Paula Nishijima
Biography
Júlia Frate Bolliger
Harum Marcio
Felicitas Rohden
Vinicius Spricigo
Beto Shwafaty
Stefanie Hessler
Und sonst einfach mal Kontakt zur Galerie aufnehmen, sie zeigen die Arbeiten vor Ort sicher gerne!