In his first solo show at Galeria Leme’s Project Room, Henrique de França showcases a series drawings derived from images (and often recreated) took from old photographs that capture ordinary ou decisive moments of an individual, a group of people, a society, a generation. Beyond just transffering the images onto the paper, the works are compositions of various fragments, giving them new connotations, sometimes surprisingly interconnected.
The title refers to the narrative suggested by the drawings, capable of unfolding into a story in the eyes of the observer without needing a specific starting and ending point, paving the way for the freedom of associations throughout the described elements, linking the journey from expectations and personal experiences.
Some sections of the exhibition consist of small groupings of drawings connected by a common horizontal line, like a sequence of events being led through a timeline. The predominantly horizontal format of most works reinforces the idea of continuity.
With a proposal situated in the realms of contemporary drawing language regarding the possibilities of composition, line, formal values, and white spaces, there’s a recurrent prevalence of voids and unfinished figurative elements, as if one point or another of a memory could be better identified by memory over another, highlighting spaces it fills or doesn’t. Nullifications and erasures perhaps represent the need to rewrite, to “redraw” a past, attempting to change a path that could redefine the present.
The reason for bringing old images to the core of the works lies in addressing the formation of contemporary society through its development in religious traditions, subservient relationships, distancing, and mainly in stories that fade away but leave their traces.
Henrique de França (São Paulo, 1982) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
In 2010, he participated in the following exhibitions: XIII Municipal Visual Arts Salon (SAMAP) of João Pessoa, PB, X Recôncavo Biennial, BA, and the 38th Santo André Salon. In 2009, he was part of the group show “Desenho Ocupado” at the Project Room of Galeria Leme.