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Elephants flying... why?
Why are elephants flying?...
Because they can.
In our minds they can.
If the elephants around us, are conditioned by the rules of physics,
on our planet and all of this cosmos,
we have an incredible ability,
as humans (who knows about the other animals)
To make whatever we want happen, in our mind, in our imagination.
And then, from those possibilities, we can extrapolate ideas and messages and perspectives
for our... to apply in our real world.
trying to counteract the rules that constrain us.
As said the other day by (the writer) Gonçalo M. Tavares, in a lecture:
"Grammar constrains us."
"I can only have one body. I can not say: my bodies"
But nevertheless, we are several people within one.
As these areas that I understand, that I've experienced, coexist.
And those multiple experiences culminate in this metamorphosis of movements
of "outsides" and "insides"...
Several experiments, contributing in parallel to a single body.
Sometimes I remember... Fernando Pessoa...
Able to position himself in different points of view, he could get in someone else's shoes
shaping his own intelligence, rationality, sensitivity,
to look in different ways for different things.
It was clever...
... and all that he was. And it was in fact a clever way to
get rid of that... that burden.
When we try to channel all that we have inside,
all our different "selves",
into a single person, we come into...
Unremitting shock.
Unremitting shock, within a drama, a...
We self-confine!
One pulls to his side, another pulls to another.
Should I be like this? Should I be like that?
Because everyone is right...
They all complement each other.
Different reasons...
We may understand each one’s reasons but not agree with all of them...
...which is actually what happens when people approach us (from the outside).
We understand them and accept them in whole but there's plenty we'd like to change.
Whether it’s specific things or everything, we'd like to see change.
Sometimes... This too is reflected in paintings.
I have a gestural expression, quite vigorous...
when I'm painting or drawing things of a certain dimension
it’s like a gymnastics class, where I'm almost oblivious of the whole.
Yes, movement is very present in your stroke...
In some strokes...
In a part of Rodrigo that portrays things in a certain way,
there's physicality, indeed, put into the stroke,
or dash, or stain, whatever...
And then, when I go and sit on the couch and look at the canvas, to see at where I’ve got to,
as many of us say sometimes: the canvas then...speaks to me.
We’re not always fully aware of what we’ve created
Often what we create is done subconsciously, almost automatically
things that the body knows and makes faster than our mind perceives.
So, we have to take a step back, look at it and communicate with it... and see...
It must have taken a lot of training throughout your life
to be able to put into practice all that you were learning
through the various things you've been doing and experiencing,
...from sports to the arts, theatre, courses and lectures...
and this amalgamation of experiences that later,
artistic "desaire", makes amazing things emerge...
It is in fact complementarity... Experiencing many different things,
such as playing a classical guitar, or simply riding a bike
that makes me flow over the world in a different way...
The body records it all... we are a permanent sponge!
Of experiences...
And when we squeeze the sponge, much of what’s been absorbed then emerges
and those moments that we talked about...
the act of painting...
are... is squeezing the sponge. And we do not know,
often we are unaware at that moment what is emerging.
The body, the body's got it stored.
It's extraordinary to me the humility with which you create so many works of such a diverse nature.
When we see for example your "cartoons" - your "liveliest" drawings
Or when you create a brush stroke full of body and movement
It's extraordinary to see how you can, with such humility, transfer that magic to the canvas
that makes us fly to other imaginary worlds.
Well, I feel indeed very humbled by all that surrounds us.
all the little things are incredibly important,
But the large things are equally important.
Everything is important, I see interest in everything.
But at the same time, I'm almost nihilistic. I guess nothing matters.
Incidentally, a friend of mine asked me, sometime ago:
"What is the importance of painting nowadays?"
As important as we want to make it!
If by "squeezing the sponge" I transfer an idea I’ve been reflecting on to the canvas
And someone picks up a message or sensation through that image
then it becomes important to that person.
And therefore my journey and the process also becomes important.
That journey – whether momentary or lengthy – which sublimes at that moment...
made sense for that one person and therefore became important
And surely that is the ultimate point.
...The importance of my existance? Is none!
But, as long as I’m alive, I will have an...
impact on the people around me, for sure,
just as others have an impact on me - it's all connected - that's undeniable,
that we're always interfering...
And it's also interesting to see the small traces of your personal values
that you incorporate within your work and more could well be revealed in many more of your works
That we hope to see sometime next in the future exhibited in this country and overseas.
As you so much deserve! Rodrigo, thank you
Thank you Marcela, for this meeting, for the opportunity to communicate through you to other people...
To the world.
...To the world... yes! Because I don't believe in frontiers.
The world has no frontiers, Man does. ...mankind created them.
And we'll get to everyone because beautiful things...
And sometimes reaching everyone is... allowing others to reach us, it's making ourselves available...
it's making ourselves available!
...to let us be influenced by others.
Thanks Marcela.
Portuguese painter Rodrigo Matos Silva interviewed by Marcela Sousa Rosa
on the 2nd edition of "!n Magazine" for the item "!n Art".
Lisbon, 21-02-2013
Music: Impromptu No.3 in G flat major (D.899 - Op.90) by Franz Schubert
Performed by the pianist Maria Helena Matos, aged 93.