Fricções Históricas 

Alexandre Mury: Historial Frictions 

Vanda Klabin

the ineffaceable poetic alchemy of the works of alexandre Mury manages to en- kindle pondering, fret, irking and even the intractable discomfort entailed by the ambiguousness of libidinous pleasure. the unfoldment and depersonalization whereby the artist’s own self is dawned amidst his every work, by dint of a dis- continuous and fragmentary procedure, put forth by constantly transforming his very image and introducing his own being as the delver into historical investiga- tions; this is the chain of events which vests in him the custody of a quite exquisite artistic experience.

arthur rimbaud, in his correspondence entitled Du voyant, addressed to Georges izambard (charleville, May 13, 1871), makes a pungent assertion on the contemporary identity, viz: Je est un autre [i is another]. this means that the be- ing may only exist through the motion that generates the difference from oneself. We discern this dispersal of the self or multiplication of characters in the work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms, in his own words, “a relentless, organic tendency toward depersonalization and simulation.” in so unique, intricate and controversial characters, such as ricardo reis, alberto caeiro, Álvaro campos or Bernardo soares, we have plurality as the gist of his oeuvre, “‘to feel everything in every way,” or, videlicet, “i am not them.”

this constellation of senses, this plethora of meanings, points to a path that closes in on the unstable territory of reflecting on several painting modalities and interpreting art history, which are interfused and serve as the elements of an endless twirl of readings that go with the threads commingling in the pictorial thought of Mury.

His multiplicity is geared towards the pursuit of plural contents. Mury iconizes, riddles and dislocates the art imagery to develop a system in which his body transfigures into the engine of the picture itself. in this process of desacraliza- tion, he shifts the apex of history to a hybrid process, of referring to himself, in a sort of amorous fusion to devise something unexpected in fictitious territories, targeted at carving them into the world.

His body engenders its own language, acts as a linking agent in its recurrent torsions and contortions in the pursuit of the alter idem, the exercise of plasticity and unfoldings of his existence personified in other characters. everything speaks through or by dint of concrete contents, on one side, and fictional contents, on the other, where nothing bears a relationship with the original reality, but, rather; with a different, garbled and ambivalent reality. Plato has formulated the concept of mimesis, of art as imitation, as simulacra of the real. Mury applies the constant procedure of deconstructing and adulterating art history by way of an ironic — and even enigmatic — approach, dislocating the historical position of art works to di- alog with a sort of vol de parole [speech lifting], a denied truth, by rereading the classic iconography.

Mury resorts to his own self as the center of ordainment and to manifest his aesthetic experiences, his self acts as the artistic player which converts into his own work, as if engaged in a sculpting act, a conveyance of meanings, always confronting other characters. this connectedness of himself to the others through historical appropriations and a process of constant denudation or travestying is a rhetoric tool that bridges the distance and aura of inaccessibility of the works of ancient masters, a sort of blurring of our memory relating to works to which we are acquainted, a paradox similar to looking and not seeing. experimenting, sup- pressing the distance and inaccessibility, a conflictive magnetism between what could be and could not be, as an archaeological reconstruction.

His fictional deeds are connected to the contemporary practices by means of the photographic record, verging on a pictorial act. they yield provocative, far- fetched and mostly ironic alternatives. Multiple and many-hued views where rel- ativized subjective questions are broadened, summoning the thought by which i is another who thinks of me. a sort of disorder of all senses, a constant transfor- mation, an eccentricity.

Pictorial media forays into painting, sculpture, installation art or perfor- mance, with boundlessly open and inconclusive readings that are diffused amid his array of images by the right of free artistic movement, bid by a historical, classic, modern or contemporary interest. Literary, mythological and religious motifs also underlie his repertoire and open up new realms for his visual con- cerns. this punning between differences and similarities, equivalences or disso- ciations alludes to the conceptions of rené Magritte, found in a letter to Michel Foucault (May 23, 1966), where he makes averments on what is false or genuine, and appraises the pun between the words visible and invisible: “things do not have resemblances. they do or do not have similitudes.”1

His unceasing process of appropriating and realigning art history icons and inseminating them in another discursive strategy may be a strategy of denial, since he is supposed to instill them in paced oppositions. He problematizes, trig- gers off new meanings for artistic conception, dislocating its historical locus, burning the reception frontiers which we have established for these icons, set- ting in motion the emergency of this image, and innervating the representational surface behind diverse procedures, in an unexampled vitality.

in this vein, Marcel Duchamp has affirmed that “the observer gives the pic- ture more than he takes from it.” Mury is concurrently the producer and observer of his own work. there is loss of identity when he places on hold his own self and represents an alter idem, which is fancied and seen through the lens of an actual construct, though untied to the former reality. Looking at himself, creating intimacy through two-way mirrors or constant denudations, as if playing different roles at the same time, he reveals the fictional character and structure of inven- tion, of a plurality of possible worlds, of internetworkings within his own work, sometimes with ironic leaning, and others, with lurid colors.

the appropriation of existing forms or the concoction of imaginary scenes stands as the structure of his work and acting organization, with which this uni- verse is effectuated by the photographic camera recording. resorting to trivial ob- jects found in quotidian profusion, Mury manages to ascribe new meanings and rearrange the order in his artistic conception. He develops scenic and allegorical anima to accentuate the aesthetic reach of his works and, in the arrangement of this discourse, assembles several procedures, such as the choice of stage, materi- al and the set of fragments that will compose the scene and found a work derived from his imagination. the apparent chaos is a rearrangement, so that a new artis- tic intervention may emerge. anarchical and inconsonant at first, it then becomes perspicacious and intricate when substantiated in the photographic surface.

the cornerstone is to portray his own self and, from this nodal point, perform subtraction or addition operations that, although referring to certain historical works, attain different nuances by a system of simulation and dissimulation of his physical body, which is part of the scene set. in the destitution of the original image, the work’s conception and physical execution part ways, and a self-con- struction process is conveyed by the symbolic and sensorial overstatement of appearing in the world. at times he establishes a fusion of artistic languages, where the elements of performance and photography are interweaved.

in the process pervading his work, there are sceneries that oft vanish in the act of performing. Fragments, diverse objects and feed-in components produce true allegories, a mosaic of elements managing to utter different voices and sens- es. His body, the main character and part of the work, such as cindy sherman, sometimes is doubled or tripled by a play of mirrors. in these exercises of deprival or accumulation in ambiguous situations, Mury delves into the art through the transformation of our view, by reinterpretation and rereading. Meanwhile, he pos- es a challenge which seems to play its own life by unremittingly discussing its rid- dles. thinking of art grounded on an interpretation, aggregating new entities and significations, be them decipherable or not, all of this takes me to these sentences of clarice Lispector: “Decipher me but do not finish. i can still surprise you.”

On the heels of the safe route of artistic icons composed by the great masters, Mury proposes his own challenges and aesthetic exercises, reactivates scenes or representations, depriving them of their original territories, aligning his ideas in convincing scenic symphonies, coming up with metaphors and strange but meaningful links, supplying us with another identity, transitive and edgy, for his- torical questions.

as an artist engendering and mediating multiple senses, in his perverse, iron- ic and provocative rationale, Mury outlines a new framework for reading pieces of art. He sets his own stage for inexhaustible aesthetic experimentations and pro- poses a new and wide-ranging discussion on the parameters of contemporary art. as Ortega y Gasset has averred, “God has placed beauty in the world to be stolen.” in point of fact, Mury has advanced and comprehended that lesson very well.

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1. em FOUcaULt, Michel. isto não é um cachimbo. 5a ed. rio de Janeiro: Paz e terra, 1988, p. 82.

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Vanda Klabin is an art historian, curator of several art exhibits and author of essays and articles on contemporary art. she holds a Bachelor of arts in Political and social sciences from PUc-rio (Pontifical catholic University of rio