* a term employed by Paulo Venancio Filho in “Influência Poética” (Poetic Influence), a text from the catalog of the exhibit “Influência Poética: Dez desenhistas contemporâneos, Amilcar de Castro e Mira Schendel” (Poetic Influence: Ten contemporary draftspersons, Amilcar de Castro and Mira Schendel), Paço Imperial, RJ, 1996.
On the Tightrope
Thiago Honório’s drawings renounce any pretentious accommodations, subverting the easy gesture and appropriate disposition. Hovering over doubt, at the edge of persistence of gravity, everything seems is about to fall apart... Like a man on a tightrope, his greatest virtuosity lies in overcoming the fall that is about to take place. With voracious calm, his body tries to adapt its weight to each new step, because he is dealing with minimal points of support.
Thiago Honório positions himself facing the silence of whiteness*, drawing not just on paper, but with the paper, treating the support as field of action, He clearly admits the intrinsic potentiality of a visual field: the problematization of space and the recognition of planarity. Through an interruption in spatial continuity, a new spatial contingency gets created which, though expansive, fits only within the specific field determined by the drawing.
The drawings bring up a silent disturbance. Clumsily, the line firms up, and it is firm to such an extent that it cannot be straight, creating a restrained tension like a subtly perceived earthquake. Decisions regarding uncertainties, the seeming softness of the line does not conform to the force employed nor to the showdown with the thicker oil bar lines. The attempt at building the air, structuring out the invisible, and facing up to the white, so silent, is reminiscent of the courage of the man on the tightrope, on a near-untenable wire.
— Tatiana Blass
Text published in the folder of the Centro Cultural São Paulo – CCSP. São Paulo: Centro Cultural São Paulo – CCSP, May 2001.
Translated by Gabriel Blum