Below:

1: Text from art critics
2: Artist’s Résumé



LASCAS
[Scraps] Painting as {a foreign?} language

The mediation of Painting

In the western tradition, the shape of the canvas is identified with a certain gender of Painting: Portraits are done in vertical canvases, while landscapes are painted in horizontal ones. The Installation  “LASCAS – [Scraps] “ presented with other works in “LASCAS [Scraps] – Painting as a (foreign) language” by Geraldo Souza Dias subverts such a convention by showing a simultaneity of perspectives.
It comprehends 50 vertical paintings done on planks of wood, placed side by side, displaying a type of cityscape of horizontal apprehension, which take over three walls of the exhibiting space. With that procedure, the artist dislocates the bird’s eye view, which normally we have of the ground to a frontal look, reserved to the walls (and to the thereon hung paintings) and at the same time he divides that cityscape, supposedly continuous, into small pieces.
Here there is no longer any privileged view point for the total apprehension of the work. Each wood board is a fragment that constitutes at its own turn and according to the demand of the viewer a specific look. But taken altogether, they mimic the skyline of large cities, like São Paulo, out of which the taller skyscrapers stand out.  The work invites us to an intense coming-and-going, a restless dislocation. Its encompassing demands movement from the viewer. Here, no doubt, we detect something of the very same kind of experience we have with the city: a kind of condemnation to a partial vision, upon which the totality imposes itself only in detriment of the understanding of each of its parts. Because each scrap or each fragment has a kind of autonomy, it shows itself as a complete entireness.
The 50 pieces are elaborated after the collage of several materials (magazines, newspapers, architectural plans, printed ads and comic books) which appear partially covered by a painting which mixes different paints, colors, techniques. As in a cubist collage, the representational space is interrupted by elements from the reality. Each painting shows a different universe, articulated around an image (painted or pasted on the wood), a phrase or a structure which organizes its inner visibility.  We are faced with works that demonstrate an abrupt straightforwardness, successive plans that deny the three-dimensional perspective and refuse to accept our look. Like city walls, each painting lets see through it, what was previously behind, but not quite very clearly.  
In these works, the operation of Painting itself is revealing. Painting is what makes that all the presences have same weight: a sentence taken out of an advertisement, the work of a well-known artist, an illustration. Painting operates ambiguously: it hides details but let see through it its differentiated origin. To Painting is conferred a kind of power that pacifies dissonances yet without erasing them completely. 

Thais Rivitti

Tower of Babel

Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, July to September, 2007
Geraldo Souza Dias’ work is characterized by a research around painting and word, image and concept, placing in jeopardy objects, names, meanings and by doing so, questioning the notions of imaginary, representation and language. Phrases, words in several languages, drawn or printed letters, calligraphic lines, writings, associate themselves to images of their fragments and are organized in geometric structures and patterns of abstraction. Word and image are placed in a dialectical relashionship in the picture surface, where, as the artist says, “the text dilutes the bidimensional character of the image, trying to interpret it in a single dimension”. This project seems to evolve in the always unstable space between perceiving and naming what is perceived. It is a sort of reflection on Art, its Nature and the artist’s work, as well as about the codes that organize representation, perception and the systems of signifiers. Tower of Babel is a construction made of small painted canvases and wood stretchers, precariously arranged in a spiral that, although a recurrent theme of a certain period of Art History (from the end of the Middle Age to the beginning of the Baroque) brings immediately to memory the Monument to the 3rd International  (1920) by the constructivist Russian artist V. Tatlin(1885-1953). The ensemble is par of the author’s personal archive, a sort of a diary from his working studio, with notes on thoughts, facts of his personal life, project sketches. The images show landscapes, collages, human figures, objects, quoted texts, wordplays, abstractions, references to painting tradition and to Art History, with some ironic manipulations of other artists’ works. The open spaces allow a sight of the interior of the tower and its building’s process while at the same time confer it strategic transparency to its pertaining to the exhibition’s space, a building also burden of historical meanings.  The ascending spiral seems to describe a narrative, to indicate a way to be followed by the beholder. The basis of the tower display an accumulation of things that seem to want to say, that announce without a logical formulation and that order themselves in the funneling that lead to the canvases with the inscription “once upon a time” (in Portuguese and in English), the beginning of a open story, thrown in time and space, like a red moon against a darken sky. Beyond the metaphor about the origin of the races and the different languages, setting up the notion of otherness among the human beings (the I and the other, in former works by Geraldo) says the legend, that the king order the construction of the Tower of Babel in ancient Babylon wanted to make him a name. Exactly here is the primordial finality of language, to name, what is here at play : what moves from the  basis of the tower is what is still searching form, meaning, a murmuring language, but a powerful matter, which keeps being molded by the will, the demiurgic gesture of the artist. What comes from that is placed in the world, we call it art, its History is in the museum. Once upon a time…
Ivo Mesquita 

Text for the exhibition at Paço das Artes, São Paulo, 2004
Geraldo Souza Dias’ recent works out of small canvases, are part of a personal archive, a diary in which the artist records several events and scenes of his everyday life. Small paintings represent portraits, self-portraits, art references, landscapes, letters, newspaper cutouts and unexpected images as a tiger or a clayfilter.
However, one cannot say that all are exposed, the majority is not to contemplate. Its function in the ensemble is structural like that of a vertebra. The careful assembling in the shape of a house of cards, brings grouping of letters which, far from being mere graphic elements, forms words in German. In former works the artist – who lived almost ten years in Germany – used large canvases upon which he wrote sentences that dealt among other themes, migration and the difference between the I and the other.
In this work, the image also looses its prerogative not to the meaning of the words, but to the stretcher, the skeleton that sustains the house. It is as if the paintings that are in the inner part of the building renounced to their exteriority and superficiality in order to give shape to this pyramidal organism. They hide themselves and form a volume, a body in which each part must do its duty without vacillating, unless they may compromise the entireness. Sure about the fact that not all can be seen, not so much for question of privacy, but for elemental principles of construction, they accommodate themselves as if they were predestinated to be the foundations placed in unstable soil.
The apparent instability in which they are gathered leads us to think about the situation of Painting itself and its task of maintaining a tradition. By dealing with fragments of everyday life of the artist, also the reference to the difficulty of creating a lasting painting oeuvre is not too far. On the other hand, the playful aspects of the assemblage alludes to an activity that aimed more to the pleasure (of assembling, of playing, of painting) more than any other finality
Overcome the old quarrel about the Death of the Painting, the artist, always faithfull to his métier, can practice it without the need of brushes, canvas or paint. In Kunstfarbe, the only work presented at the exhibition realized still in Germany, colored stripes of fabric interlace a metallic grid under a open sky, shows that the field of Painting is vast and that it cannot be reduced to the traditional means of presentation.
Geraldo shows also works in larger supports, in them he, starting from the graphic structure of advertisings and announcements in newspaper supplements, creates a painting that converses with the constructive stream. But in this relationship so many dissonances are blatantly displayed. The formal cleanness and the search for rigor and objectivity that plus the valorization of empty spaces were the major contribution of some constructivist artists, also in the graphic design, are here contaminated by the vulgarity of the space of life. It is as if the artist, with refined historical consciousness, had as his premise, the fallacy of the modernist project, and, without ignoring it, keeps leading his painting. Little by little, it mixes itself with the world without fearing that its specificity disappears in the banality of everyday life.
Cauê Alves



Curriculum

Education

Undergraduate:                      

1975-79    Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo

Graduate Studies:

1982-84    Pratt Institute, New York, USA, - Master of Fine Arts advisor:
                  Phoebe Helmann
1993-00    Universität der Künste Berlin, GERMANY –
                 Ph. D. (Art Theory) – advisor: Andreas Haus
                 Thesis: Mira Schendel: Kunst zwischen Metaphysik und Leiblichkeit
                 (Mira Schendel: Art between Metaphysics and Corporeity)
2006         Universidade de São Paulo, BRAZIL, Post-Doctoral Thesis (Livre-Docência):
                 BABEL: an installation of paintings and a corollary text.

                        
Positions held in Educational Institutions – Universities and Colleges

2007        Since 2007  Associate Professor at Escola de Comunicações e Artes
                da Universidade de São Paulo Courses: Color Design (undergraduate level)
                Painting (undergraduate and graduate levels), Word & Image
                (Graduate Seminar),
                The Fragmented Mirror – A Discussion on Contemporary Painting
                (Graduate Seminar)
2002–05  Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program,  Instituto de Artes, Design e
                Marketing, Lisbon, Course: Contemporary Visual Expression
2002        Professor at Escola de Comunicações e Artes - Department of Visual Arts
                Universidade de São Paulo, BRAZIL
2000-01   Professor at Escola Superior de Design, Instituto de Artes Visuais, Design e
                Marketing, Lisbon, PORTUGAL,  Courses: Basic Drawing, Technical Drawing,
                 Art History
1990-93   Universidade de São Paulo - campus of São Carlos, BRAZIL,
                 Department of Architecture, Courses: Drawing, Plastic
1986-88   Adjunct Assistant Professor at Marymount College,
                Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, NY , USA, Course: Color Design,
1984-85   Assistant Professor at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina,
                 Florianópolis, BRASIL, subjects: Architetural Planning,
                 History and Theory of Architecture, Communication Design
1981-82    Instructor at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina,
                 Florianópolis, BRAZIL

Publications

Books

2001       Mira Schendel, (essay and chronology). 96p., Galerie Nationale du Jeu de
               Paume, Paris, FRANCE
2000       Mira Schendel: Kunst zwischen Metaphysik und Leiblichkeit, 302p.,
               Galda + Wilch Verlag, Berlin, GERMANY/Cambridge, Massachusetts. USA

Articles in Magazines:

2006       O Corpo em Mira – Interview with Hermann Schmitz, Novos Estudos: 
               CEBRAP, v. 74, pp. 140-153, São Paulo, BRAZIL
2003       Contundência e Delicadeza na Obra de Mira Schendel, Ars, 
               São Paulo, v. 1, Nr. 1, pp. 116-138
2001       Pequeno ensaio sobre o modernismo brasileiro,
               Revista A Idade da Imagem, v. 2, p. 20-25, Lisbon, PORTUGAL
1985       Getting back to where I once belonged,
                Revista Arte em São Paulo, no. 31, BRAZIL
1981       Cotonetes, Revista Arte em São Paulo, no. 3, BRAZIL

Chapters on Books:

2005      Word & Image: the incorporation of codes of Writing into Painting. in:
               Eduardo Côrte-Real; Carlos A. M. Duarte; Fernando Carvalho Rodrigues.
               (Org). Pride & Predesign: the cultural heritage and the science of design.
               Lisbon: IADE,, v. , p. 91-94. PORTUGAL
1998       O Expressionismo Abstrato: a Pintura Norte-americana nos anos 40 e 50,
               in Annateresa Fabris (org.), Arte & Política -
               Algumas Possibilidades de Leitura,
               Editora C/ Arte, Belo Horizonte, p. 105-162,  BRAZIL
2004       A obra de arte no espaço urbano. in Maria Beatriz de Medeiros. (org.).
               Arte em pesquisa: especifidades. Brasília: Universidade de Brasília,, v. 2, p. 247-
               257, BRAZIL
2003       Palavra e Imagem: A Incorporação de Códigos da Escrita no Trabalho de
               Pintura. in: Medeiros, Maria Beatriz de. (org.). A Arte Pesquisa,
               Brasília: Universidade de Brasília, v. 1, p. 246-251

Exhibitions List:

One Man Exhibitions
      
1984        Pratt Institute, New York, USA
1985        Centro Cultural São Paulo, BRAZIL
1987        The Corner Gallery, New York, USA
1989        Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
1989-91   Itaúgaleria de Arte, São Paulo (1989),
                Goiânia, Ribeirão                                      
                Preto (1990) and Brasília (1991), BRAZIL
1993        Horizontes, Centro Integrado de Cultura, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
1994        Berliner Bilder, Galerie Frank Hänel, Berlin, GERMANY
1995        Metamorphose, VHS Galerie, Berlin, GERMANY
1996        Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1999        Galerie Nord, Berlin, GERMANY
2001        Pinturas 1996-2000, Palácio Pombal, Lisbon
2004        Paço das Artes, São Paulo, BRAZIL
2004        RPA Regina Pinho de Almeida Escritório de Arte, São Paulo, BRAZIL
2005        Pinturas Recentes, Casa da Cultura da América Latina, Brasília, BRAZIL
2006        Babel, Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade
                de São Paulo, BRAZIL
2007        Torre, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (in July), BRAZIL

Mural Painting

1985        Restaurant at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis
1991        I Ching, Pedestrian walkway under Rua da Consolação, São Paulo

Group exhibitions

1976       Salão de Arte de São Bernardo do Campo, BRAZIL
1979       Expo.FAU, FAUUSP, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1980       Salão Brasileiro de Arte, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1981       Salão Nacional de Arte de Belo Horizonte, BRAZIL
               Exposição Brasil - Japão, Tokyo, Kyoto and Atami, JAPAN
1982       Salão Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
               The Figure, Pratt Institute Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA
1984       Artists’ Call, Pratt Institute Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA
               International Cultural Exchange, Marymount Manhattan College,
               New York, USA
1985       Cores de Santa Catarina, Alfândega, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
               Salão de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, BRAZIL
               Exposição com Flávia Fernandes, Alfândega, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
1987       Statements in the Abstract, East End Arts, Riverhead, NY, USA
               9th New York Art Expo., New York
1988       Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, USA
1989       Paço das Artes, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1989       Kramer Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1990       Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, BRAZIL
               Salão de Arte Contemporânea, Ribeirão Preto, BRAZIL
1990       Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, BRAZIL
1991       Centro Cultural da USP de São Carlos, BRAZIL
               Salão Nacional de Arte de Belo Horizonte, BRAZIL
1991       Salão de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, BRAZIL
1992       Galeria Montesanti-Roesler, São Paulo, BRAZIL
               Galeria Artespaço, Recife, BRAZIL
               Instalações, Engenho Central, Piracicaba, BRAZIL
1993       Salão de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, BRAZIL
1994       Freie Berliner Kunstausstellung, Berliner Messe, Berlin, GERMANY
1995       October Gallery, London, ENGLAND
               Meisterschülerausstellung, Hochschule der Künste Berlin, GERMANY
               Instituto Cultural Brasileiro na Alemanha, Berlin, GERMANY
1996       Seinsichten aus Welten, Kunstmeile, Portcenter, Rostock, GERMANY
               Blick, Boecker GmbH, Berlin, GERMANY
               Brasilianische Kunst, Kunsthaus, Frankfurt, GERMANY
1997       Karl-Hofer-Gesellschaft Stipendiaten 1995/1997, Künstlerhaus Bethanien,
               Berlin, GERMANY
               Intersecções, Künstlerwerkstatt Bahnhof Westend, Berlin, GERMANY
               Ortstermin, Galerie Nord, Berlin, GERMANY
1999       KunsTRaum, Reinbeckhallen, Berlin, GERMANY
2000       Second auction of international young, contemporary drawing,
               Galerie die Box, BerliN, GERMANY
2003       40 Anos,40 Artistas, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, BRAZIL
2004       Word & Silence: A meeting of visual artists with the Poetry of Cassiano
                Ricardo, Espaço Helena Calil, Fundação Cassiano Ricardo,
                São José dos Campos, BRAZIL
2005        Ocupação, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, BRAZIL
2006        Bienal de Santos, BRAZIL

Awards

1981        Salão Nacional de Arte, Belo Horizonte, BRAZIL
1991        Salão de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, BRAZIL
2006        Honor Prize, 10th Biennial of Santos, BRAZIL
1995        Karl-Hofer Gesellschaft Atelier Stipendium, Berlin, GERMANY
1991        Special Jury Prize, Salon of Contemporary Art, Curitiba, BRAZIL
1981        Public Art Prize, Salon of Art of Belo Horizonte, BRAZIL

Scholarships/Grants

1979-82   Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq,
                 Brasília - Research: „The work of Art in Public Space” advisor:
                 Prof.a. Dr. Aracy Amaral, BRAZIL
1982-84   CAPES /Fulbright for the Máster of Arts at Pratt Institute, New York
1993-95   CAPES /DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst ),
                 BRAZIL/GERMANY
1996         Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rostock, GERMANY
1998         Pro Helvetia, Swiss Cultural Foundation, Bern, SWITZERLAND
1998-00   NaFöG – Nachwuchs Förderungsgesetz, Berlin, for the Doctoral Studies at
                 Universität der Künste Berlin, GERMANY

Artist in Residence Programs:                                                              

1983        Pratt in Italy, Tylers School of Art, Rome, ITALY 
1984        Vermont Studio Colony, Johnson, Vermont, USA
1995-97   Karl-Hofer-Gesellschaft, Berlin, GERMANY

Community services

1988        Playschool Association, New York, USA
                Artistic activities for abused children 
1989        Oficinas Culturais “Três Rios”, São Paulo BRAZIL, 
                Workshop of  Painging
1989-90   Oficina Cultural de São Miguel Paulista „Luiz Gonzaga“, São Paulo,
                BRAZIL - Workshop of Painting
1990        Oficina Cultural „Oswald de Andrade“, São Paulo, BRAZIL
                Workshop of Creative Processes
1992        Oficina Cultural Regional „Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda“, São Carlos,
                BRAZIL - Workshop of Paintings
2002,4,5  Presentation of the artistic careers for secondary level students
                 in the event: A Universidade e as Profissões
                (The University and the professions), Universidade de São Paulo, BRAZIL
2003-07   Member of the Commission USP Recicla -
                 Recycling Program of the Universidade de São Paulo

Works in Public and Institutional Collections

Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank AG, Munique, GERMANY
Berlin-Hannoversche Hypothekenbank AG, Berlin. GERMANY
Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
Öffentliche Versicherung, Braunschweig, GERMANY
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, BRAZIL
Vermont Studio Colony, Johnson, Vermont, USA