I am the object that is in me.
F.Guattari, Chaosmosis
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Thiago Honório: Cut is text
“Corte” [“Cut”] conveys philosophical and poetic meditations transmuted into works of art. Its discursive nature corresponds to the complexity of aesthetic thought that informs Thiago Honório’s work, which may or may not be associated with an academic investigation.
Honório embraces the question of how contemporary art is and contains its own aesthetic philosophy, the artistic object being understood as an Open Work subject to infinite readings by the spectator-enjoyer. It is within this path of understanding that his meticulous procedures unfold, contradicting the already clichéd concepts of “chance” and “spontaneity” that uphold the discourse of many of art’s contemporary investigations. Thus, Thiago Honório unhesitatingly gives preference to the controlled project over the projectile in free flight – although he does not ignore the fact that the unpredictability of the artistic result may be an unavoidable and necessary consequence.
His creative practice follows a logic of studies in which he articulates authors such as Georges Bataille, Paul Valéry, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, in addition to intercross various references such as distinct artistic movements (such as Surrealism, Conceptual Art, and Minimalism, among others), film, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, the hard sciences and medicine – to name but a few.
Thiago Honório regards art objects as extensions of the textual source itself (which functions as both original stimulus to creation and a means by which to orchestrate the visual experience in space). Not by chance, noble materials are used to make up the sensual body of complex ideas that he transmutes into works.
In the exhibition room, the artist seeks to bring together “occasionally irreconcilable heterogeneous temporalities”, appreciating (or inciting) something he calls “suspension of time”. In this show, gallery time is limited – the consequence of a certain “discontinuous, unfinished, elliptical” aspect of the works. In this sense, the idea of disjunction directs the elaboration of the domes, display windows, bell jars, objects, mirrored cases and drawings, all constructed according to a principle of material-conceptual antagonism that makes up double criticisms: opaque/transparent; animal/mineral; artificial/natural; surface/depth; negative/positive.
“Corte” began to be formulated in 2008. The title alludes to the term’s importance in film and its relationship to the principle of editing. Thus, animal tusks, acrylics, horns, skins, metals, and mirrors – among others – are juxtaposed to form harmonious pieces within a pact of coexistence. It is also the notion of juxtaposition that allows to gather these elements that are so strange to one another and to keep from annulling themselves individually as the signifiers they are.
In “Corte”, the materials out of which objects (and even drawings) are made are also their very textuality. The works neither tell stories nor refer to the world as a representation of life. According to French philosopher Anne Cauquelin, contemporary art presents possibilities for transcending the notion of representation in which a door is always left open so that the meaning of the work may be complemented by the spectator who, in turn, no longer “expects” but participates in the construction of the artistic object’s meaning. In his words, “the expression of a work is its extension outside itself and not the expression of its author attempting to ‘signify something’ ”.
As previously noted, Honório navigates such precepts of contemporary art with ease and, for this very reason, comfortably confounds the senses of the other by provoking communicational instability with material solidity: his works are fascinating qua sophisticated visual constructions supported by dialectical paradoxes that engender a permanent enigma.
With subtle cynicism, the artist’s work explains the doubtful criteria of art’s purity and originality, currently figures of speech – or commercial resource – more than anything else, during a chaotic time of remixes and remakes in which the authenticity of a piece lies principally in its ability to reorganize pre-existing references. And, within such a concept, “Corte” is, therefore, a text that rewrites worlds in order to organize them within the environment of art.
References:
CAUQUELIN, Anne. “Frequentar os Incorporais”. São Paulo: Martins Editora, 2008.
HONÓRIO, Thiago. Relatório para o Exame de Qualificação apresentado ao Programa de Pós-graduação em Artes Visuais. São Paulo: Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, 2010.
— Daniela Labra
Rio de Janeiro: Galeria Laura Marsiaj, 2011.
Translated by Stephen Berg