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ARQUITETURA DO SER

28

ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEING
ÁLLISSON OPITZ
FEBRUARY | 2024

PRESS CLIPPINGS

How are we built? From this main questioning, the artist Állison Opitz’s work develops. Through a keen eye for elements that form the human’s psyche and soul, the materials and layers of her work represent structures with which we are built upon.

 

Similarly to architecture’s deepest roots, which is the result of the combination of the greek words “main” and “construction”, her work leads us through how she perceives the impact of events around us and how they shape us throughout our lives.

 

These events, now transformed into almost archetypical elements, unfold and create shapes, both within us and her work, thus exploring the relationship between the material and the interpretation of how it could be understood as the layers that compose the ethos.

 

Materiality and the artistic process are essential in the artist’s work, carrying an enormous complexity in their concept. The final image on the walls is the result of this construction, composed by the union of these various elements.

 

Some materials are raw, while others are astonishingly refined, resulting in the materiality’s importance of the artworks, born from the meaning each one has to the artist which are linked to her life experiences and the structure of her own being.

 

The embroidery represents the women in her family, who are a fundamental part of her childhood’ affective memories. The golden color and the cardboard form something new together, embodying how the external affects the internal, and all the same, how other’s expectations inevitably affect us. The ceramic grounds the mind, calming and settling what could otherwise escape from her control and out of her hands.

 

Her artistic process is allegorical. The act of tearing the cardboard stands for powerlessness, its accidental shapes are similar to the acrylic’s watering in her paintings, addressing self-control instead of its loss or, at least, its vain attempt.

 

Adding to these very brutal allegories comes the quiet and controlled breath of the embroidery, stitching point by point, and the modest silence of the hands over the ceramic’s cold clay.

 

Adding another layer of meaning upon action and material, comes the nomenclature. The names of Állisson Opitz’s series are as important as almost everything else in the composition.

 

The series “Vazio” (‘Void’) represents the structural hollow inside each one of us, essential to any beginning, when the emptiness is felt inside, one can only try to understand its construction, according to the artist.
 

In “Filigranas de contentamento” (‘Filigrees of contentment’), a new construction element is observed: our own illusion of contentment, a cyclic search within others’ life experiences, where we can seek what’s expected of us, spaces where we can fit in and label. These are the boxes we put ourselves in, at nobody’s request.

 

“Vivências fossilizadas” (‘Fossilized Experiences’), as the name says, represents looking for ourselves in other people’s day-to-day, and once we recognize ourselves in it, they become like a mirror. Even though they are borrowed memories, through them, we can understand ourselves.


The artist visualizes an altar in the series “Silenciar”(‘To silence’), which soothes the search in the last three series. This is a layer from the past, the aforementioned memories of the women in her family. As guides, these memories show a way to organize the whirlwind that results from thoughts and feelings.

 

Returning to the boxes in which we fit ourselves in and are labeled by others, comes the series “Re vestir” (‘Re-dressing’). Surpassing the act of fitting into other’s expectations, it represents the act of dressing the other. The insistent and primordial search for tribes and groups. Dressing oneself, and then, re-dressing in search of something genuine coming from those around us, in order to please them.

 

While tying these elements together, material, making, and nomenclature, is the series “Fragmentos de uma existência”(‘Fragments of an existence’). It concludes all construction made by each layer, meaning that the being that was built understands how they were constructed.

 

Each element that makes this being, the ancestry, the relationships nurtured, imperfections shaped and absorbed, here lie intended as architectonic layers, forming what the artist called “paisagens existenciais”(‘existential landscapes’), a comfortable and internal panorama of each one.

 

To whom is this comfort, to the being that was built, or to others?

18

RUA SIMPATIA, 23
VILA MADALENA - SP

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+55 (11) 98990-6236
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