Obra esparsa

Scattered works

My commentary

By assembling this site and distributing in collections what I did and have been doing, I meet a personal need of looking at myself like in a mirror what I learned with the help of Adriana Palma, at the time a master's student at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo and the organizer of my exhibition at the program O MAC Conversa com o Artista (The MAC talks with the Artist). On the occasion I commented on the way they present what I have in the house collection, focusing above all on material on  projection, the generically audiovisuals. When I saw the material placed in chronological order, I saw myself as never before, realizing how one thing followed another and that the fragmentation of my work makes sense as a unity in the plane of intention, more than in the plane of making.

In an interview with Francisco Salas, PM8Galeria, published in Turin, Italy in 2016, the subject comes up again as seen in the excerpt reproduced below.

FS: In the conversation we had at O Embú das artes at your home last march 2016, you told me that some critics and art historians named you under different labels, some call you a video artist with a political approach, others call you a more existential conceptual artist and some others call you a visual poet. As we talked I think the three of them suit you well but without making any exclusion. There are three aspects of your practice that can be complementary. For instance some of your collaborative works like Trama are strongly political but also they have a visual poetry that makes it even stronger.

GB: Indeed it happens because people are not aware of the diversity of matters and media I have been dealing with. Those who call me a videomaker, usually are surprised by the small number of videos that are available. The same with my installations, happenings and so on. Nobody talks about my drawings which are the main part of what I am doing. In fact the way I think, the instrument of my thought. Not always in the same style.

You are right. All I care about is understanding what life is and for this I can use any thing that comes up: drawing; writing; filming; you name it. In a big unity. In an exhibition in New York a critic called me a Lyrical Conceptualist, that is a joke, theoretically speaking. Others call me a visual poet and so on. No one has put it all together which is a kind of schizophrenia. I mean, you just did it. Thanks for that.

The arrangement in collections in which I distributes them points out, in most instances, the multifarious handling for the exposition of a thought. It deepens and reorients the approach to each one.

But there are a few operations that stand alone and have their own purposes, which I have called Scattered Work. These are the ones that go here.

_{Gabriel Borba, 2021}