Spying into the Abstract – Spying into the Abstract

Mauro Piva, Sem título, 2005. Watercolor, graphite and ink on paper, 22 x 25 cm. Photograph by Eduardo Ortega. Courtesy of Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo.

Intimacy is a complex exchange and its peculiarities understandable only to those involved. Gateway to inadequacy, isolation and frustration is in its counterpart, alienation, both physical and emotional. Mauro Piva’s coherent body of work, begun in 1999, consistently and systematically explores the subtleties and dynamics of these themes through two recurring faceless figures distinguishable only by their different coloured t-shirts (brown for male and grey for female) and nuances of sexuality through broader shoulders or breasts, ushering one into reflection, self-awareness, observation and identification.

Piva’s simple drawings are mainly done in India ink, graphite and watercolour, sober in palette and organised in his precise use of identifiable colour planes. Individually and as a group, they are powerful in their ability to engage a naturally empathetic public. An audience who without trying is automatically attributed with voyeuristic tendencies, but could just as well be looking back on itself, since undoubtedly the mundane depictions also reference our most intimate moments.

The earlier drawings barely hint at a setting and the bodies at this stage are partially depicted, fragmented, disappearing into or appearing from their otherwise empty surroundings. They convulsively assert and deny a location and identity while at the same time allow for fusion and bonding between figures and objects.

The drawings’ dimensions require that the public get up close, almost as if spying through a keyhole or down through a crack in the ceiling. A series of untitled works produced a few years later, focus on aerial views of settings and situations which now gain more detail and although simply, confidently announce a domestic realm and quotidian situations. Simple moments as such allow one a level of intimacy with figures that as public, we’d be unable to identify from a line-up, but identify with subliminally. Piva´s featureless heads at first seen partially, then from above and subsequently straight-on is at times directed to the public domain in questioning or solitude; demonstrating no sign of facial expression throughout his body of work.

The denial of a precise identity through bodily features is compensated through their body language and attire, which are key to the communication between the disarmed and naïvely portrayed figures and also with their individual conscious, in moments of solace and interaction with recurring objects. According to Piva, those from the domestic realm may be seen as an "extension of the characters’ bodies" and effectively ours as well, in their ability to trigger basic emotions and moments.

The pillow I find, traces an interesting path towards associations of psychological escape and comfort. Trees or plants, normally growing from a tiny indoor patch of grass, bring the outside in or the pondering psyche out. They too conjure escape, as do they raise connotations of internal nurture and growth (personal/emotional development). Piva chose a recurring crown as a symbolic object "that would credit the figures with importance since it references accomplishment and merit," as well as pride; a stimulus for boosting self-confidence quietly. "The crown also may have negative connotations if one considers it as an unwanted or unmerited object" says Piva; an inherited or socially awarded status coming from without and not from within.

The true crown I feel may not actually be an object but a psychological status accepted without questioning only when honestly awarded by oneself to oneself, even if for the tiniest things. We are all our own greatest critics or challengers in need of motivation to keep going at times.

Piva’s works heighten not the interaction between figures or their attitudes in the world but allow one a path through figures into emotions and psyches, intimacies, unquantifiable and intangible. These currents of basic human nature are only available to us due to their roots in our memories and emotional intelligence.