Skin of the jail
Francilins Castilho Leal
"The goal is to engineer a power circuit, capable of connecting the good vibrations of mangroves with the worldwide network of pop concept circulation. Symbolic image, a parabolic antenna stuck in the mud." (Fred Zero Quatro)
"Oh! Saint Dimas, you were the Good Thief, stealing heaven and conquering the agonized and merciful Heart of Jesus, you have become the model of trust for sinners and the repentant. By the wounds of the Crucified Jesus - in life and in death, may I be justified!" (Selection from the Prayer to Saint Dimas)
Unauthorized tags, graffiti, posters, gouges in public and private spaces. Dissolution of the pigments of urban walls, removing the body of the city: transgression squared.
Heir and protagonist of the punk movement in Salvador in the 1980s and 90s, Willyams Martins is shifting the focus of the spotlight from the stage and is diving into the visual arts produced in the shadows of the streets. In this urbunderworld, where a power struggle is constant and "going over a tag" has become cause for death, Martins is subverting and radicalizing the game. He is extracting paintings from the streets and introducing them into the contemporary art circuit, under his authorship. The skins are introjected into an aseptic artistic system, contaminating the purity of the gallery.
This artistic appropriation was widely used in the surrealist collages, more than becoming icons of Pop Art. Mimmo Rotella requisitioned traumatized posters from the streets and, going down this path, we come to Sherrie Levine, who in After Walker Evans, seizes the photographs of the famous American and sells them with her signature. On Peles Grafitadas (Graffitied Pieces), Willyams is creating an authorship network node, by exhibiting images that have been removed from public walls, engaging new concepts and reconfiguring them in the exhibition space, like an imminent bricoleur.
Jail brings together beings of transgression, who are prisoners because they have infringed upon the penal code, as well as for belonging to a particular socio-economic group. By entering this universe and bringing it outside the walls, Martins fully reveals a symbolic universe, bringing forth love, beliefs, delusions, and ultimately, the humanity of people who are forced to kill time in this perfect panoptic. He is revealing another artistic hemisphere to us, beyond providing a socio-anthropological interpretation of this isolated tribe.