Lucas Simoes (Main)

Lucas Simoes is a Brazilian artist that was born in Catanduva in 1980. Simoes after studying Architecture, went on to study at Politecnico di Milano, Italy's largest technical university. He later moved to São Paulo in 2002. His artwork has been present in galleries in Brazil, Argentina, United States, England, Spain and Germany. His use in media such as books, photography and maps, are created into new forms, through cuts and folds. More presently, however, the artist has experimented with burning and other forms of producing distortion within his work. 

"What I want to show to the world is that we all are free. That's why my work is abstract - I don't want to be imprisoned by real forms." I found this inspiring because, it opened my eyes to viewing photography as having a abstract element. Originally, I had only been single minded and believed that abstract was the traditional expressive painting, I occasionally find at galleries. I have been inspired to create expressive photography work. In all Simões’s pieces from the deeply layered to his distorted work, his meaning is to interfere with the existing meaning of an object or photograph and produce a new one that alternates between depth and movement, weirdness and exquisiteness. The photography seems to be used a instrument that allows him and the viewer to fixate on a illustrative memory. 

http://lucassimoes.com.br/About-lucas-simoes
http://facesbythesartorialist.com/content/lucas-sim%C3%B5es
http://www.arttech.ab.ca/lucas/default.html

Absence

Simoes created a series titled "Absence", this series is meant to depict that a burn to picture, is a manner of physically erasing a memory. He stated that these photographs aren't his own, so to give them such personalities and trigger memories of the past, takes skill. It bring to mind emotions of fear, melancholy and sympathy. I had originally interpreted this piece as representing the missing people from war, disasters and other forms, because of the slow erasing of their presence within the photograph, hence individuals lives. I felt this was further influenced by the title "Absence". I find that his aim of strangeness and beauty is clearly portrayed within this piece because I surprisingly find that theirs beauty from letting go of people, which is physically shown via burning. 

http://lucassimoes.com.br/nostalgia

Truth is a Continuous Collage

Within this series, titled "Truth is a Continuous Collage" the artist wanted to present a landscape where buildings are placed side by side, all that were from his opinion commissioned with very disparate concepts. An example the artist likes to bring up is the Nationalist building of the former Yugoslavia. Simoes within this series aimed to make movement the manner of truly viewing the piece, because some stretch more than 4 meters in length, making the observer to walk along the work in order to truly observe the piece. These continuous collages are created through multiple photos placed next to each other, which seemed to expand the photograph outwards, creating a feeling that the buildings are growing or shaking. 

My first beliefs of this piece was that the artist was presenting buildings in a distorted and glitched manner that represented the growth and improvements in architecture, because of the skill gone into creating these marvellous creations around the world.I also understood that he studied architecture, so I assumed he was emphasising these creations through his photography and work. My interpretation of these pieces was correct, because he wants to capture the contrasting and dissimilar appearance of the utopias. 

The photographs seem to be sowed onto a fabric base in order to hold them together. The images are then folded into a tear-drop shape creating a curved effect from the front of the piece that gives a semi-3D form. I find that this artist challenges the ordinary by the unusual use of photography, by this I mean that from my own experiences photography is typically flat and in a frame on the wall. Simoes creates shapes and new forms with the use of photography, which in the end creates a more improved photo, by making it more interesting. However, the photograph it self doesn't seem to be the strength, instead its what he does with it that is. The curves create a tonal difference on the surface of the photograph, that makes the form appear more 3D. 

Within this example, the large scale of  400 x 8 x 6 cm would allow the viewers to see the building from different perspectives that would create a different piece from each perspective point. I'm finding myself interesting the fact that the artist has created these once flat images into semi-3D images, as a result of bending and curving them. 

Quase-Cinema

Simoes produced another series of continuous collage that was based on the movement of cameras within films. This is different to the previous continuous collage series, because he presents more movement, through multiple images being placed next to each other that show the progression in the object moving. Simoes said that this interest in camera movement was inspired by the films directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and Wim Wenders. Hence, being the reason why Simoes named the series "quasi-cinema". 



This series seems to be produced in the same manner to the previous series. This image makes clear the process the artist went through to create these pieces. The photos each represent a frame from a film, each being moved slightly to create this moving image. They then are aligned to form a wave and then fixed to a base made of a layer of cloth and wood. Each one is woven to the base. 

http://lucassimoes.com.br/quase-cinema

Desretratos

Desretratos was based on the emotional expressions some volunteers experienced from telling the artist a secret told about themselves. However, he said he didn't intend on listening to their secret, so they chose a song for him to listen to. After the shoot, each person chose a colour to best suit their emotion. I had originally believed that this series of cut out and overlapped images was based on the mental state of individuals experiencing stress or anxiety, I believe that this idea was due to the confused shapes cut out of the photography as well as the dark tonal colours used through out, that have connotations of sadness and anger. 

http://lucassimoes.com.br/desretratos














Eye Wear

A more recent piece, caught my eye the most out of the rest. The artists unusual use of eye wear as a medium within this piece, is very inspiring because it brings together both vision impairments and challenging the ordinary. The spheres on this piece are meant to symbolise eyeglasses, which is because the artist has a vision impairment that makes him require glasses in order to fix his vision. Simoes calls his glasses another part of his body, because without them things would be blurry, unclear and unnoticed. This has inspired myself to doing something similar with my own vision. However, my impairment cannot be fixed with glasses because its due to other medical reasons.