David Magila: A Brazilian Flâneur of the 21st Century

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On a formal level, the work of the Brazilian artist David Magila is marked by a strong graphic foundation that sometimes originates in a decal procedure, via carbon paper, manifested in the very first instance of painting and notable only under close scrutiny of the canvases. On a poetic level, the language follows less structured schemes and harks back to dimmed and almost empty memories of a past that is still present; of the obsolete existence and changeable permanence of urban spaces created by man in his constant effort to shape his habitat through architecture and construction - be they utopian or dystopian.
Spaces familiar to all as we roam the streets, in and out of buildings, in parks and in more or less urban recreation and entertainment areas in states that, if not maintained, are destined for the inexorable process that leads to ruin, are the themes that Magila investigates with inquisitive rigour. The themes are certainly explored through energetic and polychromatic palettes, and through a panoply of lively and dynamic gradations, even so, in Magila's paintings there transpires a reflective and sometimes melancholic circumspection - a fact that reveals the existentialist soul and the philosophical sophistication of the questions that the artist's work asks.
In this sense, it is possible to associate the work of the young contemporary artist with that of the photographer and 'flâneur' Eugène Atget (1857-1927) who documented, with the same subjective and nostalgic bias, an era of French civilization in the streets of old Paris before its testimonies and architectural vestiges disappeared completely under the impetus of modernization. While Atget roamed the Parisian streets around the turn of the 20th century to immortalize the architectural triumphs and spectral aspects of capitalist society before the full advent of the phenomenon of urban modernization, Magila recounts, in the dawn of the 21st century and in his paintings, the posthumous memories of the heyday of architectural modernity in Brazil.

Magila's subject matter is the suburban culture of distinctly Brazilian neighbourhoods and peripheries, and he submits the focus of his approach to a pictorial treatment where the notion of scale and colour undergoes a highly subjective and unusual interpretation. This seems to reflect Magila's interest in the process by which people shape their surroundings, and the artist's need to 're-present' what he sees on his walks through the streets with a look of 'estrangement and reconstruction'. Upon return to the studio, this need is registered in the act of painting what he has seen with a 'foreign gaze', and therefore in dimensions and colours that give the works the impactful power of the surprising and the fantastically improbable.

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On Frequent False Conclusions (Ongoing Series)

While photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927) wandered the streets of Paris around the turn of the 20th century to immortalize the architectural triumphs and spectral aspects of capitalist society before the full advent of the phenomenon of urban modernization, artist David Magila relates to the dawn of the 21st century and crystallises in his paintings posthumous memories of the height of Brazil’s architectural modernity. These memories are - like Magila's series 'Frequent False Conclusions' suggests to us with its descriptions of allegorical ruins - a testimony to the fragility of the grandiose urban planning of the Brazilian developmental era. They point to this era’s failure in terms of the generation of concrete habitats capable of satisfying, and welcoming, the needs of the human dimension in its fullness.

Even possessing this type of historical-social introspection, transmitted with melancholic connotations wisely dissimulated by complex formal compositions and bold chromatic combinations, Magila's 'Frequent False Conclusions' series has an expansive, extrovert and sophisticated temperament. This ambivalence is especially exacerbated on canvas where fountains, pools and tropical and coastal landscapes transmit to the viewer sensations related to the ideals of hedonism, leisure and pleasure. Thus, it does not surprise us if, in the artist's representations, vacant lots, cracked floors, crumbling walls and the precarious roofs of the most derelict areas of the Brazilian metropolis are perceived as exuberant, sensual, and enriched by a contagious and almost glamorous energy. It is in this dichotomy that the viewer is surprised and fascinated by Magila's work. And it is when this dichotomy becomes resounding that whoever looks at the artist's canvases dives in them and begins to exist within the canvases themselves.

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Kalinca Costa Söderlund

Curator

www.arriere-garde.co.uk

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