desenhodesejo, 2025
It seems indeed impossible, in relation to the eye, to pronounce any other word than seduction, since nothing is so attractive in the bodies of animals and men.1
Georges Bataille
desenhodesejo consists of an arrangement made up of thirty unpublished drawings from the Estudo para Visto series, made between September 2024 and March 2025, which will be presented on a panel covered with a sand-toned texture together with a large aluminum relief by the artist Julia Gallo — something like a chain or rosary, formed from a principle of modular unity.
In this arrangement, ten drawings will be shown on the first day of the exhibition. In the same position, another ten will be displayed on the second day, and the last ten drawings on the third day, bringing the movement of the anima, of the animation, of the cartoon, as well as blurring perceptions and senses, as if the drawings could move.
The word “visto”, from the title Estudo para Visto (a homonym in Portuguese), evokes the mixture of the relationship between the one who sees and the one who is seen, between the one who looks and the one who is looked at, both the idea of something seen as a noun and, also, a verb — in this case, the verb “to dress”: I dress.
Os
The drawings were made with watercolor pencils on sheets of Japanese squared paper and assembled on sheets of rosewood. They are based on the observation of realistic crystal, glass or resin eyes commonly produced by popular saint makers for the so-called “roca” images — in this work, on a natural scale of 1:1; and of elements and fragments of decoration and ornamentation of the architecture of Minas Gerais from the Baroque and Rococo periods: capitals, columns, cornices, pediments, frontispieces, corbels, ogives, oratories, plinths, doorways and volutes. Still on the scale of these drawings, it is worth mentioning that they belong to the space of intimacy, as well as to the intimate space of the work, and perhaps this results in a movement of attraction. Arranged at eye level for a spectator of average height, between each one of them there is an empty space, a gap, so that they can always look at and be seen one by one, individually.
The use of colored pencils and their characteristics allow for the changing emphasis of light and dark on the grid, as well as interpenetration of gradations of contour and clarity, revealing a false symmetry that, in some way, discredits this grid or puts it in check.
The masks or carvings evoked are in dialogue with the assembly of the drawings on rectangular or oval, vertical or horizontal rosewood sheets. In the knots and veins of the rosewood — a tree that symbolizes wisdom — it is also possible to see eyes.
Os desenhos desta série apresentam sempre um único olho com visão monocular. Esse olho aparece envolto em espécies de volutas, máscaras, como que incrustrado em fragmentos de talha no estilo do ornato em rocaille que, no caso desses desenhos, adornam algo como um “olho-amuleto” ou uma joia rococó.
The drawings in this series always feature a single eye with monocular vision. This eye appears surrounded by a kind of volutes, masks, as if embedded in fragments of carving in the style of rocaille ornamentation which, in the case of these drawings, adorn something like an “eye-amulet” or a Rococo jewel. This desiring eye can also be connected to the third eye, the pineal gland associated with the terminal center of balance. In “O olho pineal”2 (“The Pineal Eye”), Georges Bataille states that “the pineal gland is located under the skullcap, at the top of the human physiological edifice, and its ocular character is not for this reason insignificant and secondary”; and that “pineal vision corresponds to the second system of impulses, no less complete than the horizontal system; and, therefore, far from being an absurd or gratuitous imagination, as a psychological function it can be studied in a manner identical to that of habitual vision”.
An eye that protects and sees what is hidden.
An eye that protects and also sees what is not shown.
An eye that protects and desires.
A drawn desire, a desired design.
A desire that draws, a design that desires.
One.
Desire drawing,
Drawing desire.
drawingdesire [desenhodesejo].
Thiago Honório, April 2025.
1. BATAILLE, Georges. “Olho”. Translated by Marcelo Jacques de Moraes e João Camillo Penna. Inimigo Rumor 19, Rio de Janeiro: Viveiros de Castro Editora, 2007, p. 82; ______. “Olho”. In: Documents. Desterro: Cultura e Barbárie, 2018, p. 97 (own translation).
2. BATAILLE, Georges. O ânus solar (e outros textos do sol). Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2007, p. 53-54.
Work Details
Study for Visto, 2023-2024
Watercolor pencils on squared paper; Brazilian rosewood veneer
36 x 26cm
26 x 36 cm
26 x 22 cm
22 x 26 cm
photo: Edouard Fraipont