ki delícia

Nelson Cavaquinho vs. Agnes Martin
Matte vs. Gloss
Bubble Gum vs. cosmos
That ‘Alegria’ (Happiness) samba song
Life is a lick
il pagliacci
Pinocchio & ecstasy
Accuracy in sloppiness
Levi-Strauss and the Guanabara Bay

People always ask me: Pedro Caetano, what is ‘ki delícia’, your first solo show in Guanabara, about? Well, like all the others it is about life, so – about all things. But in this particular case it starts from a question: when we think about the nature of the art object we always ask ourselves questions and there is one we are eager to answer more than any other – ‘is that pretty or ugly?’

Now, in times when we attribute to art objects the answers to the situation of native peoples, the plight of immigrants and the eternal issue of the return of modernism, we forget to consider essential questions in our understanding of these objects; and “the adjective being the most ‘choosable’ part of a sentence”* I believe we should always ask: is this object hot or cold? Is it thin or wide? Is it saturated or pastel? Is it heavy or light? Does it fit right there in that corner or should it be in the middle of the room? Is it a pain in the ass or a delight? Is it smooth or rough? Is it glossy or matte?

Starting from this, we can approach the objects and, affectively, find answers to those things, find out about the world, about the artist and – why not – about ourselves.

‘ki delícia’ speaks about art as pleasure, as a buzz, as ritual, as theater, as transcendence and celebration of this whole bittersweet thing that is life.

Pedro Caetano, July 2016

* Bruno Galan, ‘Da Rise and Fall of Da Tower’