Untitled (from the series Golden Shower / Pardo é Papel), 2019
Photo: Courtesy the artist and A Gentil Carioca
Collection
Latex, bitumen, grease, charcoal, graphite and acrylic on brown paper, toilet paper, paper clamps, metal rods
245 x 240 x 40 cm
Born in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro in 1990, Maxwell Alexandre began his exhibition career in 2017 when he submitted a 3 x 5 meter painting to a show at Capintaria gallery, entitled Capintaria Para Todos (Capintaria For All), inspired by the work and principles of American curator Walter Hopps (1932-2005). That show sought “a suspension of values and hierarchies” by making the sole requirement governing the show’s content and curation “the participants’ order of arrival.”
Members of the public and artists alike were thus invited to contribute work to the gallery’s walls.
Since then, Alexandre has exhibited widely and earned a reputation as one of Brazil’s best young contemporary artists. His first solo gallery show took place at A Gentil Carioca, Rio, and was entitled The Baptism of Maxwell Alexandre, thereby marking a transition in his career to becoming a professional artist. In 2018 he also featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Art São Paolo called Histórias Afro-Atlanticas and completed a month-long residency at the Delfina Foundation in London.
In 2019 he held he first solo exhibition outside Brazil, Pardo é Papel, at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Refusing to distinguish between his work and life, Maxwell Alexandre’s paintings incorporate a variety of influences, and portray scenes peopled by the residents, children, municipal workers, and military and police offers who live, work and operate in Rocinha, and elsewhere in Rio. Depicted with a lack of explicit facial features, and often - as in this painting - in a repetitive style that verges on motif, these characters are largely anonymous but contribute to vivid presentations of daily life. Where in other works doors, iron window frames, pool covers and satellite dishes provide the surfaces for his paintings, in Alexandre’s Pardo é Papel series, his material selection is extended through his use of rudimentary elements including brick, wax, acrylic, pastel, oil, latex, bitumen, grease, charcoal and graphite.
The series takes its name from the term pardo, one of five official nomenclatures used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in their annual census of the Brazilian population, self-selected by descendants of mixed ethnic heritage. With its longer history as a term of racial classification used by Spanish colonials across Latin America throughout slavery in both pre-colonial and colonial periods, pardo has a complicated meaning in its current usage. Speaking about his series, Alexandre has described “the political and conceptual act that I was articulating in doing this: painting black bodies on brown paper. Since the color brown was used for a long time to obscure negritude.” In addition to having had a founding role in establishing A Noiva, a Church of the Kingdom of Art, Alexandre identifies a religious line which runs through his own practice. He sees each painting as a singular moment, a concept he uses to describe a feeling of wholeness and connectivity with divinity. He thus sees and exploits the medium of painting both for its traditional place in the history of art, and for its power to enable an alternate form of communication, through which he explores themes of beauty, self-esteem, empowerment, glory, health, abundance, and power. — Elsa Gray
245 x 240 x 40 cm
Born in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro in 1990, Maxwell Alexandre began his exhibition career in 2017 when he submitted a 3 x 5 meter painting to a show at Capintaria gallery, entitled Capintaria Para Todos (Capintaria For All), inspired by the work and principles of American curator Walter Hopps (1932-2005). That show sought “a suspension of values and hierarchies” by making the sole requirement governing the show’s content and curation “the participants’ order of arrival.”
Members of the public and artists alike were thus invited to contribute work to the gallery’s walls.
Since then, Alexandre has exhibited widely and earned a reputation as one of Brazil’s best young contemporary artists. His first solo gallery show took place at A Gentil Carioca, Rio, and was entitled The Baptism of Maxwell Alexandre, thereby marking a transition in his career to becoming a professional artist. In 2018 he also featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Art São Paolo called Histórias Afro-Atlanticas and completed a month-long residency at the Delfina Foundation in London.
In 2019 he held he first solo exhibition outside Brazil, Pardo é Papel, at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Refusing to distinguish between his work and life, Maxwell Alexandre’s paintings incorporate a variety of influences, and portray scenes peopled by the residents, children, municipal workers, and military and police offers who live, work and operate in Rocinha, and elsewhere in Rio. Depicted with a lack of explicit facial features, and often - as in this painting - in a repetitive style that verges on motif, these characters are largely anonymous but contribute to vivid presentations of daily life. Where in other works doors, iron window frames, pool covers and satellite dishes provide the surfaces for his paintings, in Alexandre’s Pardo é Papel series, his material selection is extended through his use of rudimentary elements including brick, wax, acrylic, pastel, oil, latex, bitumen, grease, charcoal and graphite.
The series takes its name from the term pardo, one of five official nomenclatures used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in their annual census of the Brazilian population, self-selected by descendants of mixed ethnic heritage. With its longer history as a term of racial classification used by Spanish colonials across Latin America throughout slavery in both pre-colonial and colonial periods, pardo has a complicated meaning in its current usage. Speaking about his series, Alexandre has described “the political and conceptual act that I was articulating in doing this: painting black bodies on brown paper. Since the color brown was used for a long time to obscure negritude.” In addition to having had a founding role in establishing A Noiva, a Church of the Kingdom of Art, Alexandre identifies a religious line which runs through his own practice. He sees each painting as a singular moment, a concept he uses to describe a feeling of wholeness and connectivity with divinity. He thus sees and exploits the medium of painting both for its traditional place in the history of art, and for its power to enable an alternate form of communication, through which he explores themes of beauty, self-esteem, empowerment, glory, health, abundance, and power. — Elsa Gray