In collaboration with nature, Pedro David's solo exhibition is curated by Esther Mourão at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Belo Horizonte.
In his new solo exhibition, visual artist, photographer and apprentice, Pedro David, offers us an overview of his authorial production since 2012. In three rooms, around 70 photos provide an overview of Pedro's almost 25-year career. These are works in different formats and techniques of photography, video, engraving and sculpture, which have in common the look deeply interested in the environment, more precisely in the Cerrado biome.
The photographs from the award-winning Madeira de Lei series, shown together with its direct offspring, the bronze sculptures from the Ossos series, mark the beginning of his engagement in the defense of the Cerrado. More recent works, carried out after his move to the Serra do Cipó region, in 2020, show us the diversity of languages and forms of expression that the artist uses in his daily life. Immersed in a natural environment, very close to its beauty, but also to the threats that the environment constantly suffers, the objectivity of photography gives way to a poetic interpretation of the complexity of nature and its essential elements. A search for connection and involvement, which has art as a means and mode.
The following are present in David's recent works: the lichens that attest to the air quality in the region; the springs that flow down the mountain after the first rain of each year; the frantic movement of the full river, boiling its foam; the crystal clear water, still clean, but not so much (or until when?); the dry leaves that fall at your feet every autumn and are recorded in the most ancient of photographic techniques, the photogram – direct printing of objects in contact with photographic paper -, which here gains versions, on X-ray plates, an old obsession , until reaching the almost obsolete scanner – another camera obscura.
The engraving appears in the artist's recent experiments with mushrooms of the Psilocybe Cubensis species. A common procedure for mycologists to stamp spores, used for the reproduction of fungi, presents itself as a sui generis opportunity to obtain an organic form, typical of the shamanic visions that the mushroom itself provides. The digital photography technique reproduces, enlarges and prints it. Basic colors insist, and in the newest examples, they take their place, randomly reminding us of the pop screen prints of iconic idol Andy Wahrol. To remind us that the broadest connections are possible.
