Nocturne remains
Mario Gioia
Foliage that seems to have faces in its configuration. Liquid images of childhood, faded in grey or with raw matter highlighted. Anthropomorphic statuary in apparent state of attack. A stingray’s egg left on the sand. Mountain landscapes with primitive traces. Diverse elements that predominate in Adriana Coppio’s painting carry a dreamlike atmosphere and, in case they’re seen together, remind us of the surrealists’ cadavre exquis exercises, experiments of marked freedom and inventiveness. Nowadays, the Taubaté-born artist’s pictorial production refers to such procedures strongly linked to the imagination, but today may be related to the fragmentation and multiplicity of almost everything that surrounds us, to the easy transit between different media, states and languages and to a disorientation, typical of this era. “I’m against the expressions “fantasy” and “symbolism”. Our entire inner world is a reality – and maybe even more than our apparent world”¹, cried, in 1944, Chagall (1887-1985).
In this particular trajectory, Adriana creates some more perceptible moments, with phases, series and themes in relief. In the beginning, childhood stood out, and came in the form of large scale canvases – O Mar (2006), of 1,50 m x 3 m is maybe the most famous one. In them, it’s perceptible the artist’s skill in composing the scene and the mastering of the acrylic, of agile results and that, however, requires a temporal dexterity for the work on the painting. It’s also remarkable, and this is going to be further developed, that the artist’s work in the construction of layers and of monochromatic shades will create a sensation of oil use, due to a “desire” for thickening, even with the use of a material that is less prone to it.
Apart from the formal conditions, some features dear to the artist will be strengthened and repeated in other moments, like the characters not looking at the one that captures the image, or if stared at, have their faces distorted, dismantled, almost leaning to the shapeless in these grey landscapes. There are exceptions, but they only confirm the perspective that borders the phantasmagorical – the leading quintet of Ilha das Garças (2015), immerse in waters far away from clarity, has a glance that stares at us and challenges us, as if singing the mermaids’ song, but on the contrary. And the animals portrayed – like the ones of A Casa do Pato (2014) and Hierofania (2016) – may take us to other destinies, they resemble animals of another locus – even those of arcs, drawers and dust of memories of faded colors or, for those who venture, of other plans close to mystic-spiritual readings, theme so dear to distinguished female artists. Children, in a game of innocence and perversity, boast wings exhibited in old religious festivals or that are purely playthings of daily life – like in Irmãos (2014) and Aparição (2014), for example.
In a second phase of Adriana’s work corpus, in which she exhibits her production in solo shows such as Fogo-Fátuo (Nova Lima, MG, 2017) and Eclipse Ordinário (Casa da Luz, SP, 2019), the childhood and the use of grey and darker shades of blue are minimal. The artist also opts for medium scales. The cuts, then, keep this feeling of mismatch so present in her painting, but with an anchor in the here and now, which leaves these dystopias made of paintbrush even more pungent. Ambiguity is also accentuated, since this atmosphere of strangeness and mismatch may only depend on the observer’s imagination. The painting that names the presentation in Minas’ venue summarizes such sense. The ignis fatuus may be faced by some as an enigmatic phenomenon that brings extracorporeal traces, but should be reduced to a mere effect of decomposition, common in the chemical and biological ambits. Anyhow, the panorama in green and golden leads to a meager existence, of deflating contours and volumes.
At Casa da Luz, the dubiety of the artist’s work acquired enhancement, explained by the place where the paintings were exhibited. The cultural center occupies the building of a former hotel, of old days, and that was rebuilt after invasions, community living, semi-collapses, etc., now pulsating with an underground atmosphere. Amid hardwood hand rails, geometrically framed ceilings and walls with faded paint, Adriana’s paintings acquired new resonances. Highlights from this phase, the untitled painting, of 2017, with a bovine head “served” in geometrical accessories, Folhagens (2017), with its rhizome physicality spreading like an alien, Trepa-Trepa (2017), with its hooded characters balancing themselves on a hollow structure, and, specially, Estrelas (2016), with the enigmatic shadows gazing at a starry landscape, whose center is a dirt road, generate friction, instabilities and disturbances when placed together. “Because there’s no waking without the dream we wake from. The dream at the waking moment becomes then the “waste” of the unconscious activity, this insistent waste in which Benjamin didn’t ignore that he had been converted by Freud in the central element of his Traumdeutung (dream interpretation)”², writes Didi-Huberman.
In her most recent phase, Adriana Coppio invests again in larger dimensions, obtaining an ambivalence desired in works such as the biggest ones of Cárpatos (2019) – there are distinct scales in the series. Number 5, 2,30 m x 1,35 m, keeps and interesting unpretentiousness with trace approximations like in primitive painting – and, maybe, like the time printed on these antique walls. The series presents a predominance of beige and golden, chromaticism dialoguing with the archaic, with the more settled matter. Whereas, Cárpatos 2 e 3 (both from 2019) remind us of Bryce Canion Translation (1946), by the surrealist Max Ernst (1891-1976). Happy belonging, in this handling between the vernacular and the foreign, the local and the universal, the inanimate and the lively, the earthly and the galactic. But all so immensely human.
1. CHIPP, H.B. Teorias da Arte Moderna. Martins Fontes, São Paulo, 1993, p. 446.
2. DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. O Que Vemos, O Que Nos Olha. 34, São Paulo, 2010, p. 189