"It was all paper in the beginning," said Marcelino, explaining that the work was maturing within his process, in the daily practice of making art.  As the papers unfold in his studio, with an attentive eye, Marcelino realizes that the very curvature of the paper can become a subject in the work and break the rigidity of the plane to explore new possibilities, developed in a series of works that the artist calls "warped works"."

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Barra Funda, São Paulo

November 11, 2023

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PS: excerpt from the presentation text for the group exhibition Tudo e ao mesmo tempo (Everything and at the same time), at HUM art and project.

We do many things during our time in this world. Of these, some are to feed the body and others are for the sake of thought and emotion, and there are also those done to pass the time. All these things, good or bad, are here, cohabiting this world and occupying it as much as we do. And from them derive a multitude of other things necessary for a production chain that goes from making, storing, applying, discarding and even destroying those first things.

In this permanent cycle of things for things, many of those that are derivations are done so as not to be noticed in the process, so that they go unnoticed in the face of something more relevant[1]. To a large extent, this is because derivative things are camouflaged by their unimportance. They hide around the corner of the straight line, that shortest path between us and our goals.

From the vast horizon that opens up around the corner, at the intersection of the road, diverted from the focus of our objectives, mountains of utensils, bureaucracies, middle activities purge, all very orderly, justified, legalized, historically based. In this very articulated and complex way, we get lost and trapped in these mountains of unimportance that we usually don't even see. Each of us, immersed in our private lives, builds our own cycles of things for things. With more or less awareness, with more or less criteria, we justify a series of means, small or large, for an end that is dear to us. We make concessions...

And despite this condition, it's when the focus shifts away from the objectives that the whole context becomes unbalanced. This in itself does not bring chaos to the system as a whole, but it certainly provides moments of awareness and reflection on this continuous cycle. This exercise in deviation is not new[2], we have to admit, and perhaps it even accompanies the permanent cycle of things for things, because after all, even with concessions, we still seem to have some self-criticism.

Bruno Marcelino's Out of service project sets out to turn the corner and select things derived from a first thing. Within his cycle of things for things, immersed in his career as an artist, the straight line he pursues ends in painting, drawing and sculpture. However, as he pursues this goal, he gets sidetracked every now and then when he notices the unimportant things that are somehow at hand, in the bureaucracies and middle activities of his production processes.

Bruno Marcelino is constantly establishing productive chains in his practice and deviating from them. And the constant exchange between the shortest distance to achieve his goals and deviation is the driving force behind his production. His end painting happens because he makes color studies for derivative things. His Out of service objects exist because he builds supports to produce his paintings. And those are just a few examples. Anyone who has visited the artist's studio knows that this place is the very intersection of the path. Everything there is possibility and accumulation. And how many possibilities! Marcelino collects them, organizes them, reconfigures them, archives them, hangs them up, drops them in corners, just like he does with his carpentry, moulding and painting tools.

The hierarchy that commonly exists between the first thing and the derivative is not established in the artist's production chain. It's not difficult to notice his discomfort with the cycle of things for things.This logic is broken at this juncture, in the same way as observed in the insertion of Duchamp's ready-mades, or in all of Surrealism's Trouvées objects, passing through minimalist objects, or even in the fashion experience of clothes made not to be worn. In these cases, there is no justification and no end, but many means that render the notion of the purpose of things inoperative. And that, for those who are used to the system, is simply unacceptable: "is that art?"

Inoperative, crooked, unimportant and flawed as signboards, these things from the Out of service project are already part of our world. And they bother us here. Firstly, because of their scale, which disobeys the sculptural rite of the body in space (the objective one) in order to materialize in the dimensions of some derivative thing. Secondly, because in part they also maintain a camouflaged appearance due to the reflections, on some of their surfaces, of the space in which they are installed. And thirdly, they have an extra foot that tilts them in relation to orthogonality, that "warm shelter" for every structure. All this destabilizes the chain without prior explanation or plausible justification.

Attempting to describe these "out of order things" in order to analyze them is pointless. Because they are less for the eye, as they are derivative things, than for a global understanding of them in the context to which they belong [3]. There is no greater nuisance for those rushing along the path than to find that in the beauty of color, form, surface and materiality, in and of itself, there is no art. You see, in these cases, color, shape, surface and materiality are not items for contemplation. On the contrary, they present themselves as markers or indications of the ever-conflicting relationship, even if unseen, of the cycle of things to things, as can also be seen in the case of Sérgio Sister's (fruit) boxes.

Turning the corner, Bruno Marcelino, with his things, forces us to see the incongruity in the living wheel that we build, insert ourselves into and maintain, even if we are against it, without often questioning its necessity, naturalness or reality. This reflected image is neither beautiful nor pleasant, as happens when we are abruptly confronted with outsiders at traffic lights, overpasses or restaurant exits. It's not pretty, but it's inevitable due to the way the system works, and it serves to explain who we are and what we do with our lives.

  Curitiba, July 24, 2019

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[1] This criterion of relevance is inevitably associated with the notion of the purpose of the first thing. And depending on the importance of the thing, and its purpose in the context to which it belongs, the "end justifies any and all means" in the production chain; from small transgressions to collective poisoning to unprecedented environmental devastation.

[2] Examples of this are Rodin's decision to no longer use bases in his sculptures, or the new regulations in the state of São Paulo banning the use of plastic drinking straws. In these cases, although different and distant in time and space, the elimination of the two items (already derivative things), also makes a series of middle activities and utensils of these production chains disappear due to the loss of necessity.

[3] Next to Marcelino's things in terms of inoperability and art, but without being a natural consequence of each other, are João Osório Brzezinski's Objetos Caipiras, some installations and interventions by Eliane Prolik, Carina Weidle's disasters, Rodrigo Dulcio's swimming pools. All derivative things that rub against the gears of the chain and therefore make us look at the system with more suspicion.

Bruno Marcelino is almost a beginner on the art circuit. Quite young, he has few exhibitions under his belt; this is one of his first. Even so, he shows great quality and maturity in his work. His work also expresses the conviction that playing the game of art is only possible in the presence of opposites; through the participation of distant parties. Painting and sculpture are the opposites he calls into play. The problem is that the boundary that separated painting from sculpture and that prevailed for a long period of art history no longer exists. We know: paintings have corporeality and physical bodies have colors. So, just as any material can be used to make paintings, sculptures can house any color. However, although we live this reality, that painting and sculpture are not opposing events, a notion that is solidly lodged in our imagination, Bruno, against all this, tries to make us see that, even so, painting and sculpture are two distinct and conflicting realities.

In our imagination, although sculpture and painting are not in direct opposition, there are concepts that were forged at a time when this opposition was in vigor. These concepts define what a painting is and what a sculpture is, and when placed next to the certainties of the present, they create an intricate paradox. It is precisely by exploring this game of paradoxes that the artist creates his poetics. His work reinforces old concepts by means of events - created by him - that simultaneously extend a close relationship with the values of modern painting and sculpture; endowing the conceptual frameworks with concreteness. It's as if painting itself, sculpture itself, were there to say that the idea is correct; they were there to say that there is indeed a distance between painting and sculpture and that they demonstrate this occurrence.

In this game, it is required that the examples created have effective sculptural and pictorial qualities, otherwise everything is lost. It should be noted that even if the equation is not based on the immediate world, but on the concept of art, there is still a requirement for close harmony between the referent - the concept of art - and the reference - what the artist presents. Hence his diligence in sculpture and the refinement with which his paintings are shown. He needs us to accept that these examples, which he has created, have the quality to invoke art so that we can then also accept that they are invested with the condition of art.

The history of art enters the core of artistic making in this context. Bruno will seek to support his achievements in this arsenal of facts carried out in the spheres of painting and sculpture, considered to be art. He wants to assure us that the events he promoted extend from that great archive; that there is a relationship of continuity between them. Which is indeed true, given that so many art names are veiled at the heart of his creations.

All this effort would have been wasted if the artist hadn't also found a peculiar way of combining painting and sculpture: a way that at the same time brought them so close together that they ended up becoming a single body, and so far apart, so distant from each other, that we could see in this body the presence of two distinct and antagonistic phenomena. And that's how Marcelno's works are: they are one thing and two different things; they are paintings and sculptures.

There is an element in the object that allows for this diversity: it pushes each into its own corner, allows the painting to slide towards the sculpture, accepts that the sculpture runs towards the painting and interweaves the attributes of the different. It's the point that doesn't appear painted, where painting only appears in a virtual way. It is precisely there, in this place, that all the links are able to materialize. When the mirrored plate is perceived without the colored reflections, the whole acquires a sculptural condition; when the virtual color appears, the whole is apprehended for its pictorial nature. Moreover, it is at this point that the unity of the form finds its probability of occurrence: it is here that the link is arranged.

If it weren't for this lack, there wouldn't be the playfulness of languages, there wouldn't be the linking of the different, or at least the different. At this point, which forms a hollow, everything comes together. And what comes together is presence and lack. When we have the painting, the sculpture vacates; when we have the sculpture, the painting fails; when we have two, we don't have one; when we have one, the two are absent. All the beauty of the dialectic between the different is sustained by this vacuum. It is because it is filled with absence that those who are missing are allowed to appear; that what does not occur becomes possible.

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Curitiba, September 23, 2017

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PS: excerpt from the extended version of the presentation text for the exhibition Paintings Without Limits, with the artists BrunoMarcelino e Fernando Burjato, at the Casa da Imagem gallery.