screws and washers
Ab-Anbar launches its project space programme in its new premises, inviting Sao Paulo-based Brazilian artist Alexandre Canonico. The exhibition 'Still', is formed around site-responsive works as an exploration of balance, space, and materiality. His works, described as visual annotations, involve elegant yet simple deconstructions and rearrangements. They utilise discarded and found materials, ranging from cardboard to MDF board, and place a strong emphasis on transparency. The artworks reveal their own making, with an emphasis on using available resources. Canonico's practice delves into 'negative' space, the unseen or in-between, and showcases a strong sense of exploration, tension, and delicate precarity. New components, like carton and primary colours, are introduced, enriching his visual language.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Alexandre Canonico (b. 1974, Pirassununga, Brazil), lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. After graduating from the Architecture School at Faculdade de Belas Artes de São Paulo in 1999, Canonico continued his studies in Visual Arts at the Royal Academy School in London from 2017 to 2021.Drawing is at the core of Canonico's practice. His sculptures, wall reliefs, and installations play with the relationship between the drawing of a thing and the thing itself. His works are constructed through the articulation of lines, voids, colors, and shapes which are distinctly abstract, with the interplay between them sometimes morphing into allusive forms. The interdependency between the different parts that constitute the works and the material traces of the gestures involved in their making reinforce their anti-illusionistic character.