About Juxtapose series
Texture captures the human experience of the passage of time and memory
Having been born and lived in Rio de Janeiro into my thirties, the city and jungle backgrounds of a tropical country are embedded in my consciousness and influence my work. The bold colors of nature and clothing in the tropics and the rich textures are deeply connected to my work. Rio is densely textured, crowded with people and buildings. New construction is built upon old, as layer upon layer is applied. Favelas, self-built slum housing, are a type of organic structure with no imposed barriers. One house is built upon the next, like a jungle plant, they overgrow, falling from the hills into the city.
In Los Angeles, the architecture is modern and the buildings are new. LA is based on angles and space, both of which are more available than in Rio. The open spaces and unique light and colors of the deserts of Southern California have affected my sense of space and influence my work. I have begun to use space and angles to form new geometric shapes to create mixes of static space and flow – within a theme of texture. Texture captures the human experience of the passage of time and memory – through the time spent applying layers, covering some but not all aspects of layers below it, forming wrinkles, and scratching through to uncover layers below. The results are always surprising, as I remember some aspects of the earlier layers (time), forget others, and see completely unexpected combinations of colors playing with and against each other.
During the past six years I have lived in LA and Rio, taking the ponte aerea (air bridge), as Brazilians say, between the two cities and maintaining homes in both. I have been exploring this experience through a series of paintings called Juxtapose. Juxtapose is usually taken to mean, "placing side by side, especially in order to compare." However, for an artist, living life in two cultures does not lead to categorization or academic examination of their differences. An anthropologist might devote a career observing and categorizing the differences - as a tourist might during a vacation to an exotic land - but an artist true to her life experience is influenced by both places, and an organic merging of these influences occurs.
My Juxtapose series reveals not only side-by-side comparison but also overlap of color, shape and texture, which expands the meaning of the term juxtaposition. The German word, aufheben, describes the contradictory meaning of the overlapping sections. It is a word with several meanings that appear to be contradictory - to abolish, to preserve and to transcend. Hegel used aufheben to describe the interaction between thesis and antithesis. He described "synthesis" or "becoming" - which can be applied to the creation of art - as a process in which both "being" and "nothingness" are preserved and changed. In the Juxtapose series, the different, overlapping elements are preserved and changed. Scraping through layers of paint then imposes more change, representing the power of the in-the-moment force of the present.
Venice, California, 2010
Flavia Lima do Rego Monteiro