TONICO LEMOS AUAD - SAO PAULA. BRZ/ LONDON. UK

27 OCTOBER 2009

Written by ANNABEL FENN

Fluid [2008]               

Humans. We’re a pretty destructive lot aren’t we? Burning a few trees here, clubbing a bunch of seals there, in a high-fiving ravenous frenzy. Yet Tonico Lemos Auad turns his opposable thumbs away from the touch of brother brute and to the ways of magical boy-nomad.

Portrait [2003]               

Like many of the imaginative artists featured on [^]LAND, Auad is a manipulator of everyday objects, a shape-shifter of phantom surfaces. Take that sad bunch of bananas laying in the kitchen; brush off those annoying little bastard fruit flies and give said bananas a good old doodling. In Portrait (2003) a shadowy oxidized face burn out of the Simpon-coloured flesh in some dreamy Cubist continental breakfast, glimpsed through a broken mirror. Damn. What other possibilities are waiting cold and dormant under fluorescent lighting of your local Tesco Express?

And he doesn’t stop there. This wizard of exterior renovations next turns his attentions to the soft shag rug beneath your toes and with a shake of a lamb’s tail scrapes together a beautiful showcase of sculpted animals from Zoo Bazaria. Emerging through the lint and retaining their shape through static electricity and hairspray alone, the wraithlike half-formed animals could almost be perfect clouds that will soon melt in the wind, or at least be obliterated by a meaty sneeze.

Skull Grapes [2004]               
 

In the past Auad has used a gold necklace to outline the human body in a glorious mock-crime scene. A half-eaten bunch of grapes touched by King Midas himself is crafted into a skull, with gold glittering on the stems where the grapes once grew (Skull Grapes 2004). The effect is more powerful than a flashing Hirst creation as the buds of life slowly dehydrate and makes [^]LAND reach for that tube of anti-wrinkle cream. And the Marlborough Lights. Well…. We’re here for a good time, not for a long time.