Between Spatiality and Materiality – Solo Exhibition, The House of Arts, Miami-US, 2023

What connects Dee Lazzerini's creations presented in this exhibition goes far beyond their shared appearance and material - sculpted polychrome polyurethane covered with head pins.

In the thirteen works that compose Africa: Doubts or Debts? (África:Dúvidas ou Débitos? -2021), from the Series Algorithmic Bias (Viés Algorítmico), each representing one or more countries, just like on contemporary maps, the colors allude to elements of the landscape or the culture of each region – earthy tones for the North, dominated by the desert, and bright colors in reference to the colorful clothes from countries like Nigeria and Congo. In those, as well as in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Angola, and Mozambique, there was an intense exploitation of the population by human traffic from the 16th to the 19th century.

In the sculptures representing these countries, the golden head pins of the less explored places have been replaced by silver ones, with a loss of shine that symbolizes the pain caused by this abduction; the pin also being something that marks a point on a map. Besides, the way in which the thirteen are showed here, in line rather than in the actual form of the continent, reminds us of the partition of Africa by the colonizing European powers, who didn’t take in consideration the local populations and their ethnicities when they divided the territory - a violence per se -, as well as the African diaspora all over the world. It is a stolen Africa, stripped of its gold, its most precious gift: its own inhabitants. And maybe it is those wounds and shattered pieces looking for their lost parts that the sculpture Between Music and Desire (Entre a Música e o Desejo - 2023), from the Series Limestone (Cal), intends to heal - not only Africa and the artist himself, but all of us, through the contemplation of it.

The white shade makes a clear allusion to the plaster that covers broken limbs during recovery; plaster, which, like limestone, is obtained through the calcination process. *The writing fragments placed on the white surface remind those written by friends and family on the plaster that intends to immobilize broken bones, thus, bringing healing through affection. Automatic writing - therapeutic, in this case - was a favorite practice of the Surrealists since the founder of the movement, André Breton, author of the Manifesto of the Surrealism (1924). The idea was to let the subconscious flow thorough scribbled words without the control of the conscious mind, resulting in compositions guided by chance; this search for the unconscious being inspired by Freud - of whom they were number one fans. However, while the doctor proposed exploring the unconscious mind to bring cure, the artists, in turn, wanted to let it flow freely. And here, through his works, Dee Lazzerini brings us a mix of both the ideas. Healing is also an essential part of the artist's practice, who worked for many years building artificial body parts for medical purposes.

In his works, sometimes we can see shapes that look like limbs or floating cores - such as the elements that compose his Africa -, which allude to nano-biology. In addition, Floating Cores (Núcleos Flutuantes) is precisely the title of the first Series in which he added head pins to his polyurethane sculptures; pins that are at the same time delicate, fragile, and aggressive, and resemble instruments that can cause pain and violence, as well as repair and reconstruction, from surgery to sewing – the latter being the universe to which the head pins belong. Moreover, the pins are visually a straight line crowned by a dot, which is the beginning of all art: from dot to line; from line to shape – elements considered by the geometric abstractionists, along with color, as the “true” ones, the only intrinsic to the art universe, bearing no direct reference to the outside world, to our world.

Besides, the relationship between the micro and the macro is extremely important in the artist's research, which connects us with these two extremes - the micro and the macrocosm, which link the human body to the universe, being a concept of great value in various philosophies, mystical and esoteric doctrines, from Pythagoreanism to the alchemists; the alchemists who intended to transform the matter, just as artists do, both physically and metaphorically. Through these pins placed on the polychrome polyurethane surface, we have a link between Spatiality and Materiality, with the creation of an empty space, just like the one in which electrons float around atoms. This way, the matter of everything in the known - by man - universe is full of empty spaces, which are materialized on a larger scale through these sculptures; the visual correspondence between the micro and the macro highlighting the connection between everything that exist.

Finally, the third work in the show, Cactus (Cacto, 2022) from the Series Floating Core (Núcleos Flutuantes), proposes an agglomeration of floating cores that seems like an infinitely growing organism. This growth can allude to microscopic scale laboratory experiments - which the artist carried out on his journey as a scientist during his doctorate in France -, as well as to the galloping global population increase. Its color reminds those of mosses and lichens, which grow at will on forests’ trunks and stones, the nature spreading until it takes up all the spaces human beings have abandoned to it – let’s think of the ruins of Angkor, in Cambodia, covered by green. In addition, the sculpture phallic shape can be seen as a reference to the fertility of both man and nature - a revered symbol since the beginning of times, when survival depended on the fecundity of land, animals, and humans; the fertility of living beings becoming true through the multiplication of a small cell in millions of them. This phallic form, which, after all, is present thousands of times in each of the artist's works through the head pins, links once again the micro and the macro universes.



Text by Aline Pascholati

*With contributions from the geologist Wellington F. Marchesin

Artworks:

[Africa, Doubts or Debts? 2021] from the Series: Algorithmic Bias

[Between Music and Desire, 2023] from the Series : Limestone

[Cactus, 2022] from the Series: Floating Cores