Lucas Simões: Desmemórias

In this series of works photographed old childhood friends with whom I no longer maintain contact and also individuals I have just met. The portraits were made during a conversation.
From this encounter, I separated 10 photos of each one and, for the most part, I did not treat the photos with any particular color in mind, leaving the color and light as they were at that moment the photos were made, without any treatment. In a few cases, I found it necessary to use color.
The basic cuts for these photos are more geometric and appear to be a continuous pattern, but they actually do not repeat, they do complement each other. Lucas Simões is an independent artist based in São Paulo, with a background in architecture and design. His experiences of training as an architect redefined his perceptions of art and opened new paths of discovery. In architecture, he says, ’a drawing is more than a drawing: it is the intent that something concrete will materialize through the construction process’. This outlook has influenced his drawing process and his constructive approach to his work with collage and sculpture. With great inventiveness Simões uses source materials such as maps, books and photographs, which he then folds, cuts and deconstructs into new forms. ‘In my work’, he explains, ’the materiality of the supporting medium is important. The process of making the support a part of the work is achieved through the experiences it is subjected to, such as burning, cutting, distorting or diluting, which, at its most extreme, can destroy the subject.’ In all Simões’s many constructive experiments and heavily layered, distorted works, his intention is to intervene in the original meaning of an object or image and create a new representation that oscillates between beauty and strangeness, movement and depth. ’There is a kind of perversion in it, to take the meaning out of place,’ he says. ‘Strangeness is something that fascinates me, and to make it beautiful is even better.’