Fluid Trajectory
One does not know exactly whether they are beings, figures or models – or a hybrid of all these. Yet whatever they are, they are precisely defined – mathematically defined, we might say. They demand attention and fascinate like a first look at a catalogue of unknown specimens. Upon initial viewing, Otavio Schipper’s drawings presuppose a precise cataloguing of forms; a sharpness and a rigor not dissimilar to those of scientific observation evoke albums of mineral specimens or animal species – such is the exactness with which drawing perfectly isolates form upon the white background of the paper, revealing each individual’s own singularity even as it follows the general lines of each family and the forms that characterize it. So it was when drawing was the most precise instrument for observation and the medium for reproduction of a world removed from the ordinary individual’s everyday observation had not yet been replaced by photography or other reproduction techniques. Could it be, then, that drawing is once again revealing forms that it alone can reveal?
One does not know exactly whether they are beings, figures or models – or a hybrid of all these. Yet whatever they are, they are precisely defined – mathematically defined, we might say. They demand attention and fascinate like a first look at a catalogue of unknown specimens. Upon initial viewing, Otavio Schipper’s drawings presuppose a precise cataloguing of forms; a sharpness and a rigor not dissimilar to those of scientific observation evoke albums of mineral specimens or animal species – such is the exactness with which drawing perfectly isolates form upon the white background of the paper, revealing each individual’s own singularity even as it follows the general lines of each family and the forms that characterize it. So it was when drawing was the most precise instrument for observation and the medium for reproduction of a world removed from the ordinary individual’s everyday observation had not yet been replaced by photography or other reproduction techniques. Could it be, then, that drawing is once again revealing forms that it alone can reveal?
But what forms are these? Do they exist or are they imaginary or are they in a region beyond or just short of our observation, between reality and abstraction? And what do they represent? Organic beings, abstract figures, inorganic structures or simply imaginary forms that are nevertheless stimulated by a whole world beyond observation through which we have access to reality’s imperceptible structures. Therefore beings that find themselves between imagination and reality. But instead of revealing themselves to altered states of mind, they are forms that derive from the abstract and rigorous investigation of reality. In these drawings, we are able to make out a real albeit not empirical world in which imagination excites science and science excites imagination.
These lysergic, immaterial forms, fluctuating between apparition and imagination seem to inhabit a hyper infra world to which we belong although it is neither familiar nor intimate to us in spite of its constant presence around us. Fluid drawing might be a more appropriate name by which to call these forms that define themselves according to morphological instability; forming and deforming themselves in constant mutation. They could be plasma shapes. Therefore transitory and borderline forms between reality and abstraction, limits between being and model, the edges of diverse levels of reality folding themselves among one another; hence the simultaneously sharp, diffuse, and truly impalpable nature of these drawings.
These lysergic, immaterial forms, fluctuating between apparition and imagination seem to inhabit a hyper infra world to which we belong although it is neither familiar nor intimate to us in spite of its constant presence around us. Fluid drawing might be a more appropriate name by which to call these forms that define themselves according to morphological instability; forming and deforming themselves in constant mutation. They could be plasma shapes. Therefore transitory and borderline forms between reality and abstraction, limits between being and model, the edges of diverse levels of reality folding themselves among one another; hence the simultaneously sharp, diffuse, and truly impalpable nature of these drawings.
The transparency of watercolor is the ideal medium and the fluctuation it imparts to the image on the paper points to the almost fleeting, momentary apparition of that which we see in the drawing. The immaterial transparency of the image imparts to it an unreal and simultaneously living appearance that the current cinema and its immense technological capacity perfectly realizes, manipulates and renders banal. Otavio’s works merge a refined manual technique and imagination that issue from a scientific/technological present and its visual representations.
The elastic, topologically twisted surfaces – soft, floating and fluorescent – are not under the influence of gravity; at least not our own. They belong to a synthetic world built behind the real world. Making drawings of fluid would appear to be a seemingly impossible task. How does one bestow form upon something that is formless by definition, made up of nothing beyond luminescence? Even color defines itself tenuously on the boundary of transparent matter. Certain blues stop short of being color to be, instead, an escape from it.
The elastic, topologically twisted surfaces – soft, floating and fluorescent – are not under the influence of gravity; at least not our own. They belong to a synthetic world built behind the real world. Making drawings of fluid would appear to be a seemingly impossible task. How does one bestow form upon something that is formless by definition, made up of nothing beyond luminescence? Even color defines itself tenuously on the boundary of transparent matter. Certain blues stop short of being color to be, instead, an escape from it.
Text by Paulo Venancio Filho
English translation by Stephen Berg