Everything tends to ascend. Or not. Francesco João Scavarda

About

In this first moment, the artist shows a version of a 1961’s work from the homonymous series “Concetto Spaziale” by modern artist Lucio Fontana. In Scavarda’s work, the radical gesture of stabbing the canvas, for which Fontana is widely recognized, is simulated using gouache, reproducing the jags of the original. If Scavarda’s painting turns Fontana’s gesture static, the action is recovered, with humor, by the elevator’s upward movement.

The elevator’s ascension mechanism also plays with the belief in art’s “spiritual elevation” and the idea of social ascension. Although choosing painting as media, the artist subject is mainly conceptual – the legitimacy guaranteed by painting is what matters to Scavarda.

On 15/05 the exhibition is completed with other works that unfold the conceptual discussion proposed by Scavarda, where he takes advantage of the unquestionable value of the media to make tabula rasa with the subjects of his paintings, choosing images from diversified sources such as Art History, comics books or chocolate packages, refusing hierarchies and lifting all these images to the status of work of art.

About Francesco João Scavarda

Francesco João Scavarda was born in Milan, Italy, in 1987 and lives and works in São Paulo. He holds a BFA from Accademia di Brera, Milão. Among his main shows are: Summertime ’78, Kunsthalle São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2015), Outdoor I, Warm, São Paulo, Brazil (2015), Nimm’s Mal Easy, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel, Switzerland (2015), Extra DRY, Peep Hole, DRY, Milan, Italy (2014), Studiolo#8, Cabinet, Milan, Italy (2013), The Opposite of the Opposite Opposite of the Opposite, Gasconade, Milan, Italy (2012).