JOGOS DE AÇÃO

Nicolás Céspedes (PER) and Renato Custodio(BR) met in Argentina through mutual skateboarding friends, and soon found they had another common interest: art. With the intention of mixing their passion for skateboarding and art, which they see as the same thing, they painted their polyurethane wheels to put movement and expression on the canvas, an expensive and familiar connection to these two restless minds. From the collaborative works arising from a mix between performance/maneuver and painting, the exhibition Jogos de Ação emerges, which also explores the encounter between the individual researches of each one of them.

For Nicolás, playing is important, as well as being on the move. The tennis ball, an icon of a traditional sport, unlike skateboarding, marks the canvas as an expressive and even therapeutic record, hoping that the ballast of the process can also do the viewer good. The discarded material (the tennis ball in this case, the sport in the trash) is found on the street and reused by the artist, becoming essential to develop the language of the works on display here.

Unlike Nicolás' minimalist and radical game/process, Renato presents and approaches different researches that, in one way or another, also deal with movement. From the gesture with his spatula made of road signs, landscapes emerge that do not exist - but that we can see. Infinite and colorful horizons, in light waves, that contrast or merge with the gray brutality of the city. The skate marks on the wall, photographed, the paint splattered across the board, the skateboard axles and wheels used as a brush, or as a tennis ball.

Much of the exhibition was resolved, materialized and formalized the day before opening, in an environment of chaos and love. Works from different series by Renato are everywhere, the impeccable montage by fellow musician and artist Maurício Rossi continuing despite clashes over the expography. Luís and Vini Goy, totally solicitous, adjusting the lighting of new works in collaboration with the artists, carried out in CANTO itself, drying while they were stretched on the stretchers. Nicolás hammering, varnishing, eating a sandwich and skateboarding at the same time, impossibly focused on each task, between the barking of the dog Luna and Renato rehearsing the performance with Tom, Jaques, Evandro and William on the background. For him, there's always room for more friends. In the end, the ironic title of the exhibition, one of the initial impasses of this project, seemed sincere.

-Luciana Foraciepe