Texto pela ocasião da exposição Sonho, queda livre, RV Cultura e Arte, Salvador, 2022.

By Catarina Duncan

The issue of work is directly related to the issue of rest – these gestures, as everyday as they are universal, are present in Felipe Rezende’s production. When we look at his works, we see workers, human and non-human, in a state of suspension, their bodies and structures levitating, melting, breaking up and falling asleep, asserting the right to time, leisure and dreams.

In ‘ Dream free fall’, we know from paintings, videos, drawings and sculptures, the daily life of workers in Barreiras, western Bahia. Felipe shared work days with Adriano, Claudio and Marcelo, in services for mining companies, civil construction, delivery or agriculture. Facing the lack of perspective in artistic practice, Felipe worked as a construction assistant side by side with his friends, portrayed here in paintings and drawings. It’s not about looking at the other, but looking at the next.

In the ‘Storm, Bonança, Tempestade’ series, we share scenes of pleasure, rest and insurgencies in oil paintings on truck canvas. The narrative begins before sunrise and ends at 6 pm, when the landscape changes color and announces the time of rest. In these portraits are small revenges, of workers who insist on ‘cooking the rooster’ at lunchtime, ‘breaking the boss’ toy’, ‘putting down the battery’ and sharing the dream with the landscape. We collectively dream of the moment when work will no longer be ranked according to class, gender and race markers. We collectively dream of workers’ rights.

In ‘The university and the under commons’, North American cultural theorist Fred Moten talks about the need to reflect on work and work, rest and rest, without difference, for him “disruption is necessary and the possibilities of criminality and escape that work on work requires”[1] . It is necessary to detect the limits of the rules that are imposed on us, in order to be able to transform the order that governs us. It is necessary to reflect on the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency as modes of capitalist and neoliberal thinking applied to production.

The proximity that Felipe portrays disused tools with bones of the human body in the ‘tired tools’ series reflects how a ‘body of work’ is seen and discarded as an object. The body is a tool and the tool is a body. This work portrays a historical feeling, of struggle and resilience, being tested and humanized to open the way to a new subjective conscience.

In ‘The use of objects’, the French philosopher Nicolas Bourriaud explains the difference, coined by Marx, between natural production tools (for example, working the land) and production tools created by civilization. “In the first case, argues Marx, individuals are subordinate to nature. In the second, they deal with a “product of labor”, that is, capital, a mixture of labor and production tools. These are only held together by exchange, an inter-human transaction embodied by a third term, money.” [2]

This resemblance between labor and production tools governed by money directly summarizes Felipe’s comment on bringing parts of the human body together with work tools. Both, at the service of the same capital, move in the same direction, but are taken to a point of exhaustion that makes us glimpse a revolution, a resumption of power. Felipe portrays a symptom and points to a direction.

In the work ‘Awaiting the green ray’, we see a large painting, in the background the sun sets on the orange horizon, on the earth, raw canvas, mended, we are next to human bodies, plant bodies and tool bodies. All turned towards the sun, allowing themselves to appreciate the beauty of the landscape and the weather that heralds different signs for each body present. For some, it would be the end of the working day, for others, just a change in lighting and temperature, and for others, it might not even make a difference. We thus inhabit the earth, and we are part of it.

The colors of the sky are markers of something bigger, of a force of nature that conspires, guides and directs our steps. Also following the theme of landscape and work, we see the work ‘o cielo por testemonio’, a compilation of passing paintings on the remains of used tires, in relation to the video ‘a place to lay my soul’, where the body finally finds its needed rest.

In the video ‘broken hourglass’, our axis is temporal, in the ruins of what has not yet been built, we see machines turning entire mountains into dust. Geological time being confronted by the illusion that everything belongs to man. The film is accompanied by three smaller paintings, which quote Heraclitus and TS Elliot and tell us, “The most beautiful world is like a heap of stones thrown in confusion” followed by “I will reveal to you what fear is in a handful of dust ”. The excerpts reveal the absurd situation before us, of moments when fear and confusion prevail for a project of progress that annihilates us all. Time is also the protagonist of the work ‘relogio de serra (against)’, here the tools return as subjects who also count the hours.

This exhibition crosses us in time and in struggle, for an understanding of the world in which we are free again. In the text ‘Why obey?’ by Andityas Soares Matos, she tells us, “Enough. It is time to wake up from the dreams of reason, from the sleep of reason, and realize that the richness of a civilization, that the richness of a species – homo sapiens, in our case – is not in what it has done, but precisely in what it still has. did not, in what it can do…” [3]

In an era of complete domination, human beings continue to open gaps and paths, to re-imagine life in its power. Felipe Rezende dedicates himself in his practice to this dream, which is as necessary and urgent as breathing, a dream of justice, for what has not yet been done. Those who dream of free fall know that it is necessary to dream.

[1] HARNEY, Stefano; MOTEN, Fred. The undercommons: fugitive planning & black study. New York: Minor Compositions, p. 5, 2013.

[2] BOURRIAUD, Nicolas. Pós-produção: como a arte reprograma o mundo contemporâneo, 1 ed. São Paulo: Martins Editora, p. 19, 2009

[3] 3MATOS, Andityas Soares. Por que obedecer? PISEAGRAMA, Belo Horizonte, número 13, página 58 – 65, 2019.