DIÁFANO ART MAGAZINE 2019

A nova revista digital Diáfano Art Magazine publica na sua primeira edição matéria sobre o trabalho atual de Jaime Prades. Apresenta em primeira mão as pinturas sobre papel da série "Rain".

JAIME PRADES, ART IN CONTEXT
by Fabio Magalhães

"From a tender age, Jaime Prades adopted experimentation as a creative attitude, always striving to diversify his means of expression, which are not limited to painting. His projects crossed the barriers ordained by modernity, and since the '80s his restlessness has driven him to pursue untraveled paths, pointing to new horizons.
Many of his innovative ideas were shared by German group Fluxus (flux is the Latin word for catharsis), which revolutionized the concept of art in the 1960s and 1970s, deeply influencing later generations. The work of Joseph Beuys causes immense impact even today. It is worth noting that at the same time the Fluxus group was stirring the European artistic scene, a new concept of art was also being developed in Brazil. Lygia Clark and her “Bichos” (“Beasts”), and Helio Oiticica and his “Parangolés” are just two examples of artists who brought about irreversible changes to the Brazilian artistic production.
Jaime is part of the '80s generation. Nevertheless, he was one of the pioneers in using the streets as the space and the support for his work. Along with other artists of his generation, he established new concepts of artistic language for public spaces.
My first contact with Jaime Prades happened towards the end of the '80s, and as many other art critics I was also interested in his street pieces, in the “Machines” series.
The fertility of this imagination and the strength of this poetry were closely related to the anguishes and challenges we were forced to face in our daily lives. They were marked by our times, calling our social and environmental blunders to attention. They spoke of the place where we lived, denouncing the absurdity of our quotidian existence, without losing view of hope and pointing to utopias. Jaime built a powerful language at the margins of galleries, exhibitions and museums.
In the early 1990s, I was director of MASP, the São Paulo Museum of Art, and I invited Jaime Prades to show some large pieces of his “Absurdities” series in the museum.
Today I see his huge sculptures – “Human Nature”. They are dramatic, touching works of art. Jaime rebuilds a tree from planks and nails. He creates a metaphor of the natural life with pieces of wood, construction debris. The plank is, in itself, the corpse of a tree, and the plank, as construction waste, represents a superlative death, a step ahead in the eschatology of all things. Jaime uses this blatantly dead element to reconstruct the tree “nature”. The result is surprising. The “Human Nature” work questions the perverse links of our relationship with the environment. However, the poetic possibilities of the work go beyond the ecological discourse to make us reflect on the voracity of life in our society.»

Brazilian curator and teacher Fabio Magalhães wrote this text for the presentation of the book "The Art of Jaime Prades" published in 2010.
Almost 10 years later, it is necessary to add the many installations of "Human Nature" until 2015. This year my work opens to a new creative universe. In the exhibition "Inside" of 2016 in the Mezanino gallery in Sao Paulo I showed the series of paintings "Lines". Also in the words of Fabio Magalhães: "Jaime Prades exhibition “Inside” represents a significant leap in his plastic expression. I am fascinated by the big change, as if the artist, instead of crossing a bridge, has decided to cross the river by jumping straight from one margin to the other. I do not know why he took this leap, but I know Jaime Prades was driven by his graphic experiences, his plastic knowledge and his memory. Therefore, I don’t see it as a breach or course deviation, but as the affirmation of the other margin of the river. “Inside” certainly represents a new plastic articulation that is renewed and expanded to new territories."

In these last 3 years I am concentrating in the studio doing painting on canvas and on paper with oil paints and pencils. In June this year I showed the serie "Gravitations atomiques" at the Espace International Cosmopolis in the city of Nantes, France.
Now I have the opportunity to show the first works of the new RAIN series here at Diáfano. These are my most recent works. These works that I am preparing for an solo exhibition in São Paulo, in the next year.

Jaime Prades - Sao Paulo, november/2019