CLIPPINGS

André Tietzmann’s paintings stem from academic tradition and, later on, from its history’s rupture, which has become a new modern tradition. The rupture with tradition, both in modern art history and in the artist’s artwork, happens by means of the invented color in the landscape and in the choice of the portrayed bodies. However, most times, his craft is loyal to the academic teachings.

 

​What could sound as anachronism reveals itself as a resistance act, a moment in which art history has lost its relationship with the evolutionary time imagined in the 20th century. The ruptures don’t seem possible anymore, since there is no dominant force that defines the route of what is good art and what isn’t. Maybe then, contemporary art is not about a moment in time, but timeless art in which tradition and rupture live together creating a complex atmosphere, making it not possible to have a general analysis or practical synthesis. The contemporary art field has increasingly seemed like a space with no place and a time without connections to the chronological time. Current art is made out of all means, as of any reference, articulating always to make history, from any cultural and geographical formation, with any intention.

 

​At this moment, the objective analysis turns out suspended, impossible, the reason for the absence of an art critic in its format most celebrated in the 20th century. There is neither repertoire nor tools that could handle many simultaneities and overlapping. According to Arthur Danto, the end of art history has already happened, what is left is its relationship with society, which becomes each time less classifiable and definable.

 

The show Three eras gathers bits of the work process and Tietzmann’s painting trajectory. In the gallery’s first floor there are the landscapes, fields of chromatic invention, light experiments, and the act of outdoor observation painting. In his history, he also moved out of the big city towards larger isolation and, therefore, a new landscape when moving to the northern coast of São Paulo, where he lives to this day. This solar experience is visualized in the use of strong colors chosen for its symbology, and not for its representation of reality. It is the beach lighting onto the canvas.

 

On the second floor, a recent series of erotic paintings show up, with very strong colors dislocated from reality as well. The contorted and bodies, in baroque fashion, seem to scream violently in ecstasy, mostly represented in their faces and emotional expressions. 

 

On the third floor a new series appears, with an apocalyptic tone, dialoguing very well with the emotional moment we are living in as a society. There is a glimpse of seemingly lonely and lost beings in a world of black and white, without the color that nourishes the other two series. Here, André shows a more complex side of his technique, resolving with light, shadow, and space, a state of abandonment and finiteness, a memento-mori with live bodies. It resembles statues that got out of their pedestals and did a last dance, a last movement to remind us of our solitude and that the end awaits us, perhaps before expected.

 

Danilo Oliveira

(free translation)