Ricardo Càstro

São Roque, 1972. Lives between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

Abravanar is a verb invented to designate modes of unleashing vital energy through interaction with elements of cultural memory, sometimes abstract and sometimes clearly harnessed to popular festivities, religious cults and the mass media. The abravaner may expand the self through the sensory experience of colors and light, musical chants, and the receptive, perspiring, connected body. Ricardo Càstro has been abravaning since the early 2000s, and this has yielded artistic and spiritual manifestations, both his own (and often privately so) and of others, be they partners or publics, to whom he offers beauty in return for empathy and exchange.

Wava consists of three portals: Platinum song, Stair lip and Coffee table. In silver, gold and crystal, respectively, the three works propose meditation rituals. Once activated in their totality (as the artist intends), they heighten our perception of an invisible, high-frequency wave that spreads and intensifies. The stirred wave spills into Sorocaba, where Ricardo spent a month as a resident, and out over the internet, where he has amplified this presence and possible interactions on Google Maps and Instagram, scattering clues and creating routes of access in the form of invitations. From geometries to gypsy drift, through tarot cards in a town square, a performance at the foot of a public monument, and a lot of face-pulling, all frugal and exuberant, onwards it goes, but lest we forget: exuberance is just an abravanist pretext.