Acquisitions

Architecture and design fuse in the works of Lucas Simões: Expressing intensely personal moments

Who: Brazilian artist based in São Paulo Lucas Simões, whose works have been featured in exhibits all over the world, including in London, Madrid, Tokyo and Los Angeles.

What he is known for: Lucas Simões has a background in architecture and design. These experiences redefined his perceptions of art and opened new paths of discovery. In architecture, he says, “A drawing is more than a drawing: It is the intent that something concrete will materialize through the construction process.”

Simões uses source materials such as maps, books and photographs, which he folds, cuts and deconstructs into new forms.

What’s being said about him: In an interview with Redefine Magazine about his papercut series desretratos (“unportraits”), reporter Lital Khaikin writes:

Overwhelming the voices of intimate friends as they narrated their suppressed secrets, music subtly informed the ambiance of Simões’ imagery, but the most significant power of influence was the character of each portrayed individual. Simões slices the temporality of scenes in a person’s life, solidifying within one image a progression of time and its evolving lyricism. Within the physical evidence of a single instance, Simões nonetheless relates a series of intensely personal moments. His experiments allude to the inherent capacity of deconstruction as a medium for transcendent visualization.

Simões’ characterizations embody the anecdotal construction of identity. Expressed are the fragmentary encounters that allow us to build our own narratives as well as those we assume for others. While Simões communicates by using only a single theme from each portrait’s subject, they are the same disjointed narratives which pervade our collective communications.

For the artist, “it is to question the possibility of representing a person — a lifetime — in a portrait. What I represent is the impossibility of it,” Simões says. “Strangeness is something that fascinates me, and to make it beautiful is even better.”

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Works of Lucas Simões are included in the exhibition Obras at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, Texas. The exhibition, curated by firm principal Lea Weingarten, features sculptures and installations by nine contemporary Brazilian artists. On view from Jan. 23 through March. 26.