Fernando Zarif: ArPa 2023 | English

This constellation of never-before-shown works by Fernando Zarif (1960–2010) was proposed based on two perceptions. First, that in the 1980s and ’90s, running in parallel to his celebrated activity in the São Paulo art scene, the artist also took a radical path in the context of the “return to painting.” And second, rather than being a more “conceptual” counterpoint – as attested by his exceptional work with self-portraits and an exuberant collection of compositions with ready-made objects (of which we are also presenting a sample) – his pictorial production managed to absorb and problematize a belief that the autonomy and heroism of North American abstract expressionism was incompatible with the demands of a poetics precociously committed to the persistence of an organic figuration cultivated among surrealist automatism art and deliberate cross-influence from traditional artistic languages.

 

The selection of works featured in this exhibition clearly shows that Zarif dialogued with the canvases of Jorge Guinle – at least in terms of the energy and coloration of his gesturality. He does not, however, emulate that dynamics, and, sometimes, imposes cuts and discontinuities that force us to reconsider this sort of sweeping generalization in light of his work’s imperative virtuosity, intelligent finishing, and critical distancing, all likewise equally insufficient as overreaching encapsulations. He also dialogues with Leonilson, in the intimism of a more tenuous, curative line, with his uninhibited use of written expression within the same pictorial field, with a sense of urgency and no longer afraid of sublime losses or the avoidance of purer and more intense levels of formalization. For its part, his frankness – which borders on insolence, in light of the dilutions and arrangements of the paint on the support, which is often a sheet of paper – seems to be solidary with the various initial series of the Casa 7 group, which also experimented with local repercussions of figurative sorties, in their case, based on one of their supposedly most curious influences, namely, Philip Guston’s second phase.

 

At this point, we dare say that the fundamental difference between these productions lies in how they clashed with the institutional criticism or the academic view of the pictorial processes then underway. In Zarif’s case, it seems that he rejected the opinions critical of his voracious relationship with writing, which was possibly a doctrine inspired in Orientalism, focused on artistic propositions which stand as oracular questionings, a strange algebra making use of every sort of visual and nonvisual analogy.

 

The hypothesis that his work bears close relation with surrealist automatism is supported by drawings he made in tandem with Tunga, in which the projective and diaphanous aspect of the figuration points to a ritual of formal distention, of stylistic shared experience normally seen only in musical partnerships. It is furthermore evidenced by statements given by friends and collaborators during the cycle of meetings dedicated to the artist, O Fim do Obscuro(2018), at which the figure of Antonin Artaud and John Cage appeared recurrently in place of the Matisses, de Koonings and Pollocks always invoked in New York, and the Morandis and Volpis invoked in São Paulo, where he is situated closer to Flávio de Carvalho, insofar as his adhesion to drawing and to the making of portraits is in keeping with an objectively multidisciplinary behavior and attitude.

 

It was, above all, important to gain a more thoroughgoing understanding Fernando Zarif’s familiarity with the world of the “happening,” his specialization in the temporal dimension of contemporary experience. And to observe that he worked with a myriad of series, some with evident repetition of determined unsubmissive procedures. The fact that the artist played an instrument like the cello, for example, may have determined certain formal/aesthetic aspects of the paintings shown here, since they do not strive for any formalization or sizes other than the ones they have – as though they were free, in both form and substance, from the couplings and directions dictated by recipes and models of high modernism. The incidental glissandos, pizzicatos and percussions allowed the artist to access a microtonality and a minimalism that enlarged his public by his more trusting approach to common sensibility. It was precisely this “social” aspect, the theatricalization of thought flows and processes aloof from competition that constituted the ground of the countless events that Zarif presented. At them, as far as can be seen, there was no sort of a priori separation between an aesthetic dimension and a commonplace one, ruled by shared social experience and the randomness of life.

 

Rafael Vogt Maia Rosa

A visionary and ceaseless questioner, Fernando Zarif produced a vast oeuvre, in which he established an authentic language independent from the cultural precepts of his time and associated with vanguard expressions such as performance art and video installations. Fernando Zarif is considered one of the most emblematic figures of the generation of artists from the city of São Paulo in the 1980s. From the 1990s onward, the artist began to appropriate various objects in his research, sometimes maintaining the integrity of their materials, sometimes not, but always resignifying them. Besides sculpture, video and performance, the artist explored other artistic supports, such as writing, drawing, painting and music.

 

Fernando Zarif studied architecture and took open courses in the arts. In 1982, he held his first solo show at the Gabinete Fotográfico of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. The following year, he presented performances with music by Richard Wagner and John Cage, as part of the musical programming of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (Masp). In 1995, he held his largest solo show at a Brazilian institution, at the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. In 1998, he had a solo show at the Maison des Arts et de la Culture André Malraux, in Créteil, France (1998). In 2009, he participated in his last show during life, at Espaço Tom Jobim, Rio de Janeiro. Beginning in 2011, his family began the Projeto Fernando Zarif, aimed at preserving, cataloging, and disseminating the artist’s work, with 2000 artworks recovered until today, including photographs, books, documents and writings. In 2015, the artist’s first large posthumous exhibition was held, at Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, SP, followed by a show in honor of Zarif, held by Luciana Brito Galeria. More recently, in 2021, the Instituto Fernando Zarif launched the publication “Fernando Zarif: Múltipla Unidade”.