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Exhibitions Vermeer's largest exhibition: 28 of his 35 paintings brought together for the first and only time
Music Shakira's El Casio and Vargas Llosa's pichula: the democratization of culture has gotten out of hand
Maxwell Alexandre
is someone who knows, lives and drinks, above all, from art and religion.
He did it since his childhood in Rocinha, one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, a place that marked his life "like that of any other," he says.
He does not want to fall into clichés, although his personal history is inseparable from his work
De él.
As a child he did not attend drawing classes "because it was not the case."
He did do it regularly, under the watchful eye of his professors, while studying Design and Visual Arts at the Catholic University of Rio.
He spent the years practicing sports in the street;
Skating was, then, his main form of expression.
He also practiced capoeira, although it is hard for him to admit it.
Alexandre has a mysterious, almost mystical aura that is equally magnetic and disconcerting.
The exhibition
Nuevo poder: pasabilidad
has brought him to
La Casa Encendida
in Madrid, where Alexandre talks about his relationship with the Evangelical Church dressed in sportswear and with a red cap that slightly hides his eyes.
He is emphatic and with clear ideas.
His works do not contain an iota of politics.
Nor ideology, they are pure self-portrait.
He describes art as his religion: "The gospel says that faith without work is dead, but work without faith is dead too. You have to believe and you have to do, the two things go together, so I just comply with my share."
For Alexandre, crying in front of a painting responds to an internalized code of belief, just like crying in front of a religious image.
The degree of sublimation that people in the favelas achieve through dance and prayer, he says, is not comparable to anything else.
Even more so
when in the world of art there is a violent schism between the elevated and the popular, between the abstract and the figurative.
He gladly dispenses with the label of urban artist - which he does is far removed from graffiti - but at the same time criticizes the elitism that surrounds the discipline.
In a pragmatic reality, where everything acquires a functional character, Alexandre insists on bringing art "to ordinary people".
"Codification is part of a process of social exclusion. If I call a friend from the neighborhood and take him to see an abstract painting exhibition, he would take it as a joke, because he would look outside the system. He would not understand what a code means." painting painted white.
Precisely for this reason, he explains, he incorporates pop iconography into his works, obvious references to sport or contemporary music.
One of his paintings is directly inspired by a Beyoncé and Jay-Z video clip
, symbols "of the black conquest of spaces of power."
Alexandre with some of the works that make up his new series.Javi Martínez
Black, white and "brown".
The three colors that divide Brazil establish a dialogue in Alexandre's work that dares to go one step further than his previous series.
"In
Nuevo poder
, black represents the body of the people, white is equivalent to the spaces devoted to art, and brown or ocher symbolizes art itself."
He pretty much sums up his particular fight "against the system" from within the system.
Alexandre justifies the paradox involved in contesting the spaces of power by actively participating in them:
he criticizes the dynamics of the market, but he has already exhibited in large museums and art galleries in cities such as Lyon, Tokyo or New York
.
"It has its pros and cons. I always say that there is a difference between being an artist and being a professional artist, and the latter involves bureaucracy, the most institutional part, granting interviews. Being part of the art market requires constant attention to all those aspects, but it's also made me progress and it's incredibly catapulted my career."
The artist considers that artistic spaces legitimize narratives and privilege visions of history that are not, in any case, those of Latin American society.
Being Afro-Brazilian has complicated his rise to the top of the art
and, although he is satisfied with his current projection, "when it comes to translating it into economic terms, white Americans are always better placed."
A matter of race and nationality, but also of geography.
The art market in Brazil is meager, despite the fact that his is "a fertile land for creativity."
Without intending to compare himself with stars like Neymar, he explains that he has had to proceed in a similar way to succeed.
"There is an old rumor that Neymar had the dream of being the best footballer in the world but staying in his country and playing for Santos. However, it was precisely by leaving his homeland that he became one of the best players in the world. Let's say that we share ambitions".
Maxwell does not have specific expectations on his second visit to Spain.
The first was a sigh, to know the space where he was going to expose.
"When I work, I never expect anything from anyone, for me painting is something religious," he repeats.
Yes, he wants, instead, to launch two messages.
One to the Afro community of Madrid: "
We have to colonize these spaces, we have to be present
".
Another, laughing, to the institutions: "Value me as I deserve and start paying me well."
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