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A LOGIC OF
AMBIGUITY |
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Due mainly to his inability to identify himself exclusively with the figure of an artist who views art with a certain irony, Leonilson freed himself from historical restraints and designated himself as "inquisitive" - an assertion that revivified the attitude of his two greatest models of "anti-artist", Lygia Clark and Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Leonilson belonged in a tradition of artists who addressed the interrelation between body and language, the association of Eros and logos. Each of Leonilson's work's was meticulously built as a letter contained in an intimate account, somewhat as a journal entry. As follower of an unsuccessful romantic ideal, Leonilson was compelled to record his interiority so as subjectivity after conceptual objects. This legacy reappreciates the entire notion of subjectivity after conceptual experimentation. Far from issuing skeptical opinions about the function of contemporary art, Leonilson inserted himself in the modernity program by questioning the subject's destiny, more specifically in terms of becoming aware of a short-lived present time apprehended in passing. However, the appearance of Aids symptoms was to alter the inflection of his romanticism. Despite it never constituting a statement, the syndrome accelerated ambition mechanisms. After having its future obliterated, the work veered to mythical language and awareness took refuge in past experience. The urgency of the so-called "Geração 80" (Generation 1980s), this pre previously high-spirited movement of carefree colors, became a tragic burden in which urgency became synonymous with death. Now the artist's job consists of rendering the ruinous nature of "his" disease in a dimension of universal discourse. His inquiry, however, is plainly unanswerable. Leonilson's work became distinguished as a crossing marked by the stigma of an intimate issue in his quest for 'inner voice". At this point, his art language parted with the original "Geração 80" models and evolved along a new path, with characteristics of a personal journal. Year after year, the Leonilson's graphic realm becomes increasingly synthesized through the systematic repetition of the same sings. While adopting this economy, the artist further elaborated the substance of the symbol. Three
principal formative stages contributed to build Leonilson's trajectory: |
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Painting for pleasure (1983-1988) |
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___The early years were devoted to the search of aesthetic definition: the artist plunged into painting large-format canvases with characteristics of Pop ilustration, free of realist schemes. Up until 1986, approximately, Leonilson's drawing style involved outlining forms with a darker contour line. At that time he began to depict tall tables, maps and globes. Fires (???) and rivers are recurrent elements in his works. There were also those elements which he further elaborated throughout his life: open book, tower, radar, power transformer, river, atom, clestial globe, stairs, heart, mountain and volcano, spiral, clock and compass, ando maily the hourglass that he combined with the symbol of infinite;
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Romanticism: travel notes (1989-1991)
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___Leonilson's art production was finally systematized when he showed his "travel notes", which consisted of a set of works made with buttons, semiprecious stones and embroidery (Galeria Luisa Strina, 1989, São Paulo). More than a mere assemblage of materials, these pieces introduced a fundamental medium - needlework with silk or copper thread - in Leonilson's path. At this moment he devised a new increased frequency. The artist's discourse during this period was clearly marked by his inclination toward romantic values and the "abandonment of the amorous subject".
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Allegory of the disease (1991-1993)
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___Sexuality was introduced in Leonilson's work as a steady subject-matter in 1991. The embroidery work of his previous phase (produced between late late 1992 and early 1993) should be regarded as "self-portraits." Here a figure is no longer a figure; the body wastes away and becomes lighter at each day. Freed from their anthropomorphic attributions, figure and body attained an "abstract" as the artist seemingly stopped recognizing his own image. A pocket monogrammed with his own initials ("J.L.B.D.") and a bag marked with his initials and age ("J.L. 35") are relics kept in association with his image after his death. Endowed
with the same value of an ex-voto, Leonilson's needlework rendered
the identification between image and sick person. His works subverted
the traditional notion of a portrait and became genealogical data
focused on the artist's age. In the work El Puerto (1992), Leonilson
used a patch of shirt embroidered with biographical data (name,
age, weight and height) - "Leo, 35, 60, 179" - to cover
a mirror. At the same time that he recovered the maximum degree
of authenticity, the artist attempts to hide the figure and in so
doing, approaches the sublimes. His attitude entails a cultural
activism that points to a policy of "pleasure seeking"
effective at this century end, at the same time that it challenges
medical and religious paradigms.
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