THE ESSENCE OF ART – INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDRE MORA SVERZUT
I met Alexandre back in 2015, when I was working for a well-known art fair in Turin. From that meeting we lost touch, until the first publication of #brazilianart, when Alex called me and from there a fantastic collaboration started.
Alexandre Mora Sverzut was born in Brazil and started thinking creatively at a very young age, but he produced his first self-taught works starting in 1996, when he moved to São Paulo to study and began to frequent the art scene of the time. He worked in a bank to support himself, but dissatisfied with the monotonous job he decided to quit his job and leave on a cruise ship. He lands in Rome in 2007, and what must be just yet another stop before his return definitely becomes home. He moves soon after to Savona, where with only a small towel as luggage, he begins to search for a future on Ligurian soil. From that moment he begins an assiduous research and a large and continuous production that ranges between different techniques and media, from painting to installation, from photography to sculpture and finally to graffiti.
The unconscious is a central theme in his production, the result of studies and insights in the fields of psychiatry, sociology and anthropology. Through simple gestures he creates his figures, almost abstract, which are emphasized by chromatic power.
It was not easy to choose from his large production what was most interesting to tell, because all his works tie together with a subtle thread, creating a powerful maze of deep storytelling.
Graffiti:
The graffiti series is the latest created by Mora, large individual works that take up the masonry technique, precisely, but on canvas. The characters are recognizable and carry the Brazilian artist's production guideline, making them identifiable but at the same time unique in color and technique.
Hemorrhage:
Hemorrhage is the work that is now on display in his gallery (Savona's MoraModernArtGallery).
An intense and "troublesome" installation work (composed of eleven installations and nine photographic images, to which are accompanied excerpts by Mario Rechtern and Linda Sharrock) that is meant to trigger a precise reflection and be a warning to pay attention to permanent threats, integration and distribution of resources, [...]an alertness with respect to everything that exposes us to social vulnerability and the inevitable universal EMORRAGY.
The visitor is placed in a surreal atmosphere of elegant "mise en place" consisting of white plates and surgical instruments because there are no more bodies to feed,
those bodies that have been cut, torn apart, disemboweled, dissected, drained, bled.
The underlying message is precise, and those who can overcome the limiting barrier given by the uncomfortable situation before them will be able to perceive it fully.
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Mulecada:
Mulecada is a series that really struck me right from the title.
It has as its protagonists precisely the boys (mulecada in Portuguese), stuck in a freeze frame on the canvas recalling a time that no longer comes back. The little boy, the "muleque," then grows up and becomes an adult, forgets the game, and his naiveté of a time gone by that has become mere memory.
Pencil
Pencil is a work unlike any other, a simple monochromatic exercise, where the pencil dialogues intensely with the paper and make, together, the characters enclosed in the artist's unconscious emerge.
The color is missing, but the gesture is intensely present, and it is what makes the protagonist of the work come alive.
Ochre
I decided to speak last about the series Ochre, because in my opinion it is the right way to end a journey among Alexandre's works.
Ochre in addition to talking about him, Alexandre Mora Sverzut, speaks so much about the place where he comes from, Brazil, and he does so through the use of a single color, the ochre of Provence precisely, which when mixed and worked returns light, shadow and history.
Each painting is accompanied by listening to a piece of music by great icons of the Brazilian popular music scene such as Vinicius de Moraes, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Hector Villalobos.
But Alexandre Mora Sverzut's work is not all here; five minutes of chatting with him will be enough to understand how deep and full his production is. So I invite you to visit his website and his art gallery in anticipation of upcoming events.
