Pedro França

Rio de Janeiro, 1984. Lives in São Paulo

Tearing, crumpling, blotting, gluing, breaking and staining, Pedro França has investigated ways to evoke a place of murmur and indetermination, besides acknowledging as positive processes of dismantling and destruction. Interested in working on a scale that can furnish immersive experiences, his recent work establishes direct dialogue with Cia. Teatral Ueinzz (The Ueinzz Theater Company), of which he is also a member. The result is an artistic output that shuttles between props on-stage and artworks on display.

In the installations Ueinzz Mix #1 (Cais de ovelhas) [Ueinzz Mix # 1 (Sheep Quay)] (2015) and Especulante paraíso [Speculating Paradise] (2016), França combines structures, objects and fragments of sundry materials in jumbled assemblages that seem to multiply and proliferate like a fungus, spreading in a shapeless sprawl, without clear contours or hierarchy among the parts. Clothing, fabrics, wood, paper, plastic, aluminum and cement are sanded down, glued together, printed, drawn, scrawled and written on, stained and collaged to become raw material for artworks.

At the Triennial, the artist presents Archichroma (2017), which consists of a video and a large and heterogeneous array of objects, all painted in the same glossy green, arranged in Sesc’s amphitheater. Filmed during the preparations of the event, these elements serve as supports for other images, in chroma key. While this technique is traditionally used to post-produce backdrops in audiovisual productions, in Archichroma it’s the foreground figures that become the screens for projections, thus disappearing in plain sight through camouflage, or standing out as something they are not.

[Y.R.]