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Vernissage, 1999-2007

                                                                                                     
               
                
            Vernissage consists of a polyptych made up of ten oil and varnish paintings on beveled canvases, five of which are more vertical, measuring 150 x 30 cm and the other five measuring 40 x 30 cm.

             Like a graphic punctuation, a kind of dot on the “i”, the smaller paintings are arranged above the larger ones. The canvases were painted with oil paint in the colors black, white – presence and absence of light – as well as in the primary colors, red, blue and yellow, all of them mixed with varnish.

             The term vernissage has French origins and means varnish, referring to the moment of “varnishing”, as well as the finish once given to oil paintings. The word also came to mean the opening moment of an exhibition.

             The verticalization of the set, as well as the projection of the canvases through the wooden chamfers in which the canvas surface is stretched, allows a direct relationship with the verticality and the plumb referring to the spectator's body in relation to the work, seeking to establish, even if in the plane from the wall, a more frank, direct and bodily relationship with it.

             The set that presents two planes, an upper one, formed by the five smaller paintings, and a lower one formed by the larger, narrower and more vertical paintings, was freely inspired by the allegory of the painting The burial of the Count of Orgaz (1587), by El Greco ( 1541-1614), made for the Church of Santo Tomé, in Toledo, Spain, in which it is also possible to recognize two planes: a terrestrial plane, formed by heavy and long bodies, and a celestial plane where the figures orbit the upper part of the procession.

Thiago Honório, s/d.