A CASA DAS FLORES
When it comes to art and creation, it is said that everything starts with a deeper thought or look at a surface, often a simple element of everyday life. Everyone and everything we see with our eyes is just a shallow surface of a sea of possibilities.
By the words of Eduardo Felipe Fernandes Machado, curator of Gatti's solo exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, “there is much debate about whether photography is art or not - according to theorists, photography is a process, but it can (and should) be used to artistic purposes. What would differentiate a standard, regular photograph from one considered “artistic photography” would be a set of precepts - mainly - the concept defined in its entire process.
The image for the image, without this concept, without this set of precepts, would be nothing more than the physical / chemical process produced by the camera. The result of the drawing / object with the light, over time, the composition of the painting, the questions imposed by the author of the photo, whose result is capable of moving or disturbing the viewer, is what is expected of photography as art.”
The “Casa das Flores” by Beto Gatti proves all these spate of questions. Such works go beyond the lens, the shooting. They rise of an accumulation of glances from the artist to creation. An encounter of his worldly observations and something stronger inside, in his behavioral restlessness. Talking about flowers and Gatti's immersion in working with worldly elements, for the majority, they are just flowers, with vibrant colors, incredible essences, manifestations of nature to be admired. Then, how to explain, the phenomenon that transforms them from a simple object of admiration to protagonists of the most different forms of artistic expression? The answer to that question is also an analysis of the inspiration behind this complex series.
In 2018, Gatti travels to Barcelona to shoot a fashion campaign. Between shots, he has the opportunity to visit the National Art Museum of Catalonia, where he studied the work of the most diverse Spanish artists. Most of them, at some point in their lives, dedicated themselves to painting flower arrangements in their works. At that moment, almost instinctively, the seed of experimenting with these arrangements in his art had been planted in Beto. It was in the body, in the clothes, particularly in its way and urgency to capture beyond. This seed of using flowers as a form of expression, after being watered for a long time, would be called “Casa das Flores”.
In this series, the artist works with a democratic combination of arrangements and objects that, in addition to the surface, hide a spiral of meanings. In the work “Lugar de Verano”, for example, the history of objects and that of flowers mix, creating their own identity. The first dollar bill won by photography in New York, a piece of the Berlin wall, a tile from Pompeii, the city petrified by the Vesuvius volcano. Each element with a hidden past causes an intervention in the species of flowers, their colors and textures.
From an analog camera from his first trip to China to his mother's first doll, the idea is to explore these masked stories that go beyond its material concept, and to exercise in art lovers the desire to use this magnifying lens, not only in his photos but also in the outside world.
There is also a great influence of Pollock on the vases painted by Gatti in his initiation to ink. The use of this abstract expressionism is a perfect match with the subjective concept of the series. There is no chance, just as there is no beginning, no end.
A flower may be just a flower, but for a few moments, when in the eyes of the right admirer, it may be much more than that.
Like a verse sung in the voice of Jorge Ben Jor,
"The rose is a flower
The rose is a color
The rose is a woman's name ".
The world, like art and Casa das Flores, is almost always a box of surprises.
