Studio Visits

I have scheduled my studio visit with PJota for a Thursday evening and when I am about to take the metro to his place, it starts to pour with rain. When I arrive, I am totally soaked by this typical São Paulo rainfall, which is known for raging for two hours, seeming never to stop again. Traffic comes to a standstill and you‘re probably doing best cancelling all meetings.

In PJota‘s studio, two large canvases are tightened onto a wall. They are his newest works that have already been bought by a collector before he even finalised them. Born in 1988, and supported by the gallery Choque Cultural and Volcom Art, I comprehend that PJota is one of the upcoming young Brazilian artists. He started painting when he was a child and when he was only 13 years old, he started making graffitis in the city of São José do Rio Preto, where he grew up. At the age of 17, he moved to São Paulo, where he continued working on the streets. Soon after arriving, he moved to painting on canvas and printmaking.


On the large table covered with material and sketches for ideas, I find books about anatomy, a drawing school, Renaissance literature, and much more, all serving as templates and inspiration for the figures and creatures that appear in PJota‘s paintings. Art history is an important influence in his work. Coming from street art, which only quite recently managed to enter the canon of fine arts, PJota questions traditions and at the same time establishes new ones, showing that a clear separation between street and so-called high art is neither possible nor necessary or enriching. That‘s why he analyses the human body, its perfection, and idealisation deriving from a Renaissance view of the world, as well as its contemporary function in metropolitan cities and also in media culture, where the border of reality and fiction is becoming more and more blurred and indistinguishable every day. The meaning of symbols and their mythology constitute another important aspect of PJota‘s work, and are being dismantled by the writings in varying fonts, which pervade his paintings.

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