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STATEMENT
Davis Lisboa (1965, São Paulo, Brazil), lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.
He is Hispano-Brazilian polyhedrical and multidisciplinary
visual producer and author, who works erasing the borders between
graphic and fine arts, high and low culture, art and market,
crafts and technology.
This artist proposes us a reflection
about the postmodern linguistic and cultural hybridization as self-portrait.
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EDUCATION
1996-now
Universidad de Barcelona Bellas Artes, Painting, Barcelona, Spain
1987?1990
Escola Massana, Painting, Barcelona, Spain
1984
EBART, Escola Brasileira de Arte, Painting, São Paulo, Brazil
1978?1982
Escola Carlos de Campos, Drawing of Communication, São Paulo, Brazil
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BIOGRAPHY
2006
Artworks for sale in the Galeria San Vicente 31, Seville, Spain
Artworks for sale in the Galeria Paspartú, Barcelona, Spain
Artworks for sale in the Galeria Espai [b], Barcelona, Spain
2005
Collaborations to Centre d'Art Santa Mònica's publications, Barcelona, Spain
Artworks for sale in the Galería Kunsthaus 414, Barcelona, Spain
Artworks for sale in the Galería Gaudí, Madrid, Spain
Member of the AAVC (Catalonia Visual Artists Association)
2004
Worked as webmaster, Oscar's Studio, Barcelona, Spain
1998
Obtains the Hispanic-Brazilian nationality
1989?now
Worked as free-lancer illustrator and artistic painter, Barcelona, Spain
1987?1989
Worked as illustrator, ACR Graphic Design, Barcelona, Spain
1987
Moved to live in Barcelona, Spain
1987
Worked as advertising illustrator, Publigrafs, São Paulo, Brazil
1986?1987
Worked as advertising illustrator, FCB Siboney, São Paulo, Brazil
1985?1986
Worked as advertising illustrator, CBBA Publicidade, São Paulo, Brazil
1983?1984
Worked as advertising illustrator, Sempre Propaganda S.A., São Paulo, Brazil
1965
Born in São Paulo, Brazil
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SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007
"BMW Ibérica" Exhibition, BMW Ibérica, Madrid, Spain
"BMW Cano Catalunya" Performance and exhibition, BMW Cano Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
2006
Galería de Arte San Vicente 31, Seville, Spain
"Locus quod Filiolus"
Facultat de Belles Arts de Barcelona, Spain
2003
"12 Autoretrats"
Facultat de Belles Arts de Barcelona, Spain
1984
?Firasse?
Galeria Art Brut, São Paulo, Brazil
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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2006
Galeria d'art Contemporani espai[b] - Barcelona, Espanya
Marb Art 2006, II Marbella International Contemporary Art Fair, Spain
Galeria Paspartú, Barcelona, Spain
2005
Mi?zynarodowy projekt "Art for Chelmek", Chelmek, Poland
Holland Art Fair, The Hague, Holand
Galería de Arte Gaudí, Madrid, Spain
1989
Sala Jaume Busquet, Escola Massana, Barcelona, Spain
1988
?Wonder?
Sala Jaume Busquet, Escola Massana, Barcelona, Spain.
1984
Galeria Art Brut, São Paulo, Brazil
Associação de Artistas Plásticos da Colagem, São Paulo, Brazil
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PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
BMW Ibérica Collection, BMW Ibérica, Madrid, Spain
JBM Collection, Barcelona, Spain
Centrum Miasta Collection, Chelmek, Poland
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FUTURE SHOWS
June, 15 2007
Paintings collective exhibition
Galeria d'art Contemporani espai[b] - Barcelona, Espanya
December, 1-9 2007
Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea
Fortezza de Basso, Città di Firenze, Italia
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DAVIS LISBOA BY ANTONI BATLLES
"Artistas de la Tierra" Interview. October, 2006.
Davis (1965, São Paulo, Brazil), lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. He is Hispanic-Brazilian polyhedrical and multidisciplinary visual producer and author, who works erasing the borders between graphic and fine arts, high and low culture, art and market, crafts and technology.
Why are you an artist? Why do you feel as an artist?
I remember perfectly that my first aesthetic experience happened when I was 11 years old, when influenced by the appearance of the television in colours and the sign of psicodelia in some serials of cartoons of years 70, I began to produce extensive a series of drawings of alive colourful that had a certain repercussion in my familiar and scholastic surroundings. Since then, that artistic conscience never has left to me.
How does your creativity emerge?
My creativity emerges when I do or I do not do something. In the first case, it emerges when I am drawing in my notebook, when I am photographing what I find on the street, when I am visiting a museum, when I am posting new contents in my blog, when I am leafing through an art book, when I am reading a newspaper or when I am producing my artwork. In the second case, my creativity emerges when, for example, I am lie down in the bed, just before falling asleep.
Which are the contents of your artwork?
In the 80?s, during the first stage of my artwork?s development, the continental post-modern aesthetic influenced me a lot; I?m talking about the Alselm Kiefer?s German neo-expressionism, and Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente?s Italian "transvanguardia". For that reason the contents of my artworks, seen in general, were marked by the review of the European classic tradition from "outsider Latin American" point of view; the inquiring of the idea of the originality and therefore, the taste by "remake", the rejection to the conceptual art and the recovery of the old fashioned artistic languages, like painting.
In this second stage of my art development, since 2005 I slowly begin to discover and being interested in the nuances of the analytical postmodernism. So the content of my artworks might go towards a linguistic cross-cutting component and hybridization; and therefore, the inquiring of the artistic categories, the liquid border of the "High and Low Culture" and the development of subversive and hidden contents with the purpose of sabotaging some art established norms.
Mention three artists.
I will emphasize three contemporary painters, all of them with an impressive artwork set. First: Albert Oehlen, who creates with his artworks a collection of "winks" of the modern painting, constructing a sarcastic speech of it. Second: Neo Rauch, that in his pop surrealism staging, displays characters in tragic situations that seems to come from the famous TV series "The Twilight Zone" and which could evoke to the failure of the communist project. Third: Manuel Ocampo, North American artist and painter, born in the Philippines, with a transgressor and deliberate bad taste artworks, that go in between political "cartoon" and the Philip Guston?s "Bad Painting" of and who proposes us a wild criticism of the North American ideas and society.
What do you think about the art market?
The art market is a badly necessary one.
What is the art contribution to the Earth?
From the planetary point of view, art does not bring anything. From the humanistic point of view, it brings epistemology that means, art brings a way to come near to the knowledge of what we are and what it surrounds us and also of about the different and possible ways to access to these different and possible knowledge.
What do you think about "Artistas de la Tierra"?
The "Artistas De La Tierra" website is a directory where you can discover some good emerging artists.
Antoni Batlles
"Artistas De La Tierra" interview
October, 2006
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DAVIS LISBOA, FROM THE EARLY EXPRESSIONISM TO THE POSTMODERNITY
Davis proposes to us with their work, a constant dialogue that looks for the fusion of plastic languages through postmodernism, working in different times, settling down different realities.
With a clear neo-expressionism conviction, he lets unveil with his mixed techniques on canvas and his elaborated pictorial works in acrylic, his gestural dedication, the presence of chromatic superpositions, transparencies and splashes on works where the colour flows, in all its splendour. He displays the colour in its purer intensity, in his diversity of approaches, contained in the evidence of the transparency and the wild chromatic reach, but at the same time, subtle and suggestive. There is a clear predominance of the colour spot, that plays, contrasts, stands out, meditates, it turns ephemeral essence or transcendental evidence.
He is an artist who dialogues, because he asks himself about the importance of the transcendence, but not from a spiritual positioning, but through the union of artistic languages, that constitute in themselves vibrations and diverse energies, within a clear eclecticism or attitude of combining different styles while searching the ideal concept. From the diversity of languages he creates a new language, in harmony with another way to see the painting, that, starting from the early expressionism goes through post modernity, in the sense to thread icons, hidden codes in the own work?s dynamics, establishing a singular and attractive manifestation of the transcendence. His transcendence is such that is expressed plastically through a synthesizer creative intensity.
He is a browser that goes beyond the anecdote, that is a very clear question for the Hispanic-Brazilian creator, settled down in Barcelona, when he establishes from the matter, it is to say from the Herat, speeches that go beyond the biological thing. He exhibits symbolisms, icons, languages that codify new languages, that dialogue in the speeches, as gesture in the air, swallowing positive vibrations, looking for, from the contrast and determination, a greater reach than surrounds us as a mantle in the diversity of evidences. We are what we are because we left from a limited self who is material that only listens to the biological part but, soon, it extends, amplifying his assignment, since it advances towards the being. Being the being, it states the capacity of the transcendence.
The semicircle predominates in many of his works, the semicircular thing, the rounded form, which is the result of the energy in movement, that supposes the conjunction of the matter, elaborated in oil, acrylic, silver, gold or collage. Suddenly the colour of the blood is emphasized, red chromaticism, explosion; in other zones of the composition stands out the intense green, ranges of green, that go beyond the emeralds, that surpass their own paradigms. He exhibit in different angles the power and influence of the purple colour, sanctity sign, from the celestial, but also from the humanism and complex life. From his pictorial work, constant purification, essential and sensual matter concentration, gold stands out from gilded, which it is the alchemic synthesis of the purity and the silver-plated of the silver, that is the middle way, the one that leads us by the footpaths of elevation.
The artwork of Davis is oriented towards the footpath of the purification and the transcendence, since the artist, apprentice of alchemist, poses us subtle metaphysic enigmas to be deciphered. For Davis, the important thing is how to manage that his artwork has a holy aura, that how an image can seem be speaking from another world. He shows us a way where the contradictions of the soul are exemplified towards the celestial perfection because that the spirit stays always the same. From the allegorical biological terrestrial to the persistence of something sublime, going through his ironic and satirical attitude. He exhibits irony camouflaged in apparently idyllic surroundings, signs and elements that are, by themselves, biological, sensual, that supports a vital idea of the existence. In other compositions intense colours are emphasized, contrasted, apparently very different and contrasted to each other. There are also symbol-characters, allegories of a pleiad of signs, that, depends on how they are observed can be spiritual.
In other cases, such symbols become complex, suggestive, provided with a postmodern aesthetic, atemporal, syncretic. He travels from the syncretism to the expression, avoiding the extremes, looking for the magical filter of selection, to show the allegorical part that the suggestive contents, in plastic formulations of great character, in which the mysterious thing is inside the same formal and chromatic magma.
Joan Lluís Montané
From the International Association of Art Critics
November 2006
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