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Places, Atmospheres, and Icons

For those who were used to an artist that had been working with a language marked by worn surfaces, with an existentialist flavor and dark, sometimes even somber, colors, Velloso's works, from the mid-90s on, were a new surprise. There was a new sunny, tropical and telluric visuality, a celebration of folk culture. A new dynamic in the forms reveals a new structure of composition. Geometry became a grid placed over the surface with a ludic intention that holds various endeavors (coming from pasting different fabrics and using a variety of materials to build the surface), distinct visual rhythms and a marked interest in color.

The self-absorbed and elegantly self-contained atmosphere disappears. The new production, although still abstract, asserts an explicit referential: the observation and the re-creation of a folk culture that does not have a very specific location - it might as well refer to the Brazilian heartland or to its vestiges in the poor suburbs of the big cities. It is a visuality that becomes an emblem of a commentary on the meaning of being Brazilian, and it is going to become a motto in defense of a tender, intuitive, and hybrid geometry. In the artist's own words, it is a neo-modernism that opposes to the "cold, intellectualized, and European" by mixing "Africa, indigenous visuality, something sort of art deco", a language defined as peasant constructivism. (12)
 
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