Alex Červený: Mirabilia
Renato Menezes

We should be able to prepare our dreams just as artists prepare their compositions. With the subtle matter of night and of our own souls, we should be able to craft those small, ineffable masterpieces which, fleeting as a rose, last only for the time they are dreamt and immediately fade, leaving no trace except our own memory.[1]
—Cecília Meireles

 In an infinity of worlds, I can imagine a world in which a first miracle took place: life. In that world, among many species that in each generation replicate an unchangeable destiny, there is an industrious race, eager to change its own future.[2]
—Roger Caillois

Agreeable in its intonation, curious in the way it is written, essential in its meaning, and uncommon in everyday usage, the word mirabilia gives us an accessway to Alex Červený’s work. As a compass or as a lamp, it helps us to navigate the intricacies of his private universe. The Latin word mirabilia has many meanings. It shares the same root with the adjective mirabilis, from which the words “miracle,” “mirage,” and “marvel” are derived. Mirabilia is also a genre of medieval literature which foreshadows modern travel books, no matter whether such travel is real or imaginary. Western literary tradition offers us some other examples of the use of the word. The most significant might be the title of a medieval manuscript, De Mirabilius Urbis Romae, which was used by many generations of pilgrims and tourists as a guidebook for the Eternal City, a list of must-see ruins and relics for those restless travelers who wanted to relive the splendor of imperial Rome. As against memorabilia—defined as a collection of objects that preserve the memory of a given person or event— mirabilia has to do with an intimate, magical, and mysterious imaginative experience, completely divorced from the Cartesian rationalism that has insisted in producing justifications for Western man’s dominion over other forms of life. Mirabilia is thus placed in a borderless expanse, marked solely by a subtle transition between science, consciousness, and unconsciousness. Mirabilia is averse to extremes and quite close to the endless imprecisions that live in nuance; it might well be a name for a covenant of reconciliation between physis and nomos, in the interest of imagination taken as one of our most vital resources.

Although the words “miracle,” “mirage,” and “marvel” have met with different destinies and have autonomous everyday usages, their common origin sums up basic issues that are inextricably tied to Červený’s work. The narrative density that springs at the meeting place of seeing and knowing; the inner function of vision as the beginning and end of all things; the primacy of the hand over the machine; and the vastness of a doubt about what exists as reality or as fiction—all these emanate from a cosmic grandeur that is contained in the details. Everything fits into the minute particulars of this industrious craftsman’s work, this inventive calligrapher’s handcraft: in all its points and spots, its specks and mountains, it is always a lean stroke of the brush that indicates the rhythm of his passionate gaze and leads us closer to a topography of affections in which minimal gestures are contained. In this meeting between hand and eye, mirabilia is manifested as “manner”: led on by the line—which is at once a drawing, an object and a piece of speech, a limit, a dash, and an enigma—the stroke asserts itself as an enduring mark in one’s lifetime, as both origin and destination, as a manual for existence, and as an indelible indication that one’s path was crossed by someone who has the ability to convert gross matter into jewels. Whole areas of sky and vast expanses of land are treated as miniatures and filled with rocky deserts, dry mountain masses, volcanos, forests, and citadels; sometimes ocean islands, meandering rivers, lakes, springs, and moving vapors also make their appearance; figures float free from the action of gravity and words gather together like rhizomes, with the ingenuity, method, and disarming humor of those who cling to the ornament of prayer. This landscape features dream images and ghosts, pop icons and mythological characters that adhere to our retina. Hieroglyphic messages, artifices, and innumerable secrets are untangled with a goldsmith’s caring hand, a collector’s attentiveness, and a fabulous storyteller’s elocution, reinstating mirabilia in its original place of fantasy.

In Alex Červený’s work, fantasy is affirmed not only as an aesthetic category, but also as the ethos of an attentive and solitary traveler:[3] in loneliness, a universal feeling, all people are brought together and identified. The traveler, in a contemplative state, harks back to the past and—in the presence of the past—asks himself how the alchemical compound produced by an interaction between memory, history, and desire can give itself up as an inexhaustible prime matter. Piercing through all layers of reality, the thickness of which will have to be newly negotiated by the spectator,[4] fantasy draws anew the borders between oddity and playfulness, between enchantment and awe, and reestablishes a universal order founded on the certainties of the spirit, intuition, and the senses. Whether it is a power of the soul, a cognitive ability, or just the unintentional creation of mental images, fancy—the essence of all things fantastic—is defined in Červený’s work as a deeply idiosyncratic, detached experience, intrinsic to the daily exercise of meditation. Just as in dreams, the images organized by fancy are magnetized according to their own enigmatic and individual logic, with no commitment to truth or to reason: only in dreams can one remember the time before creation and after the great catastrophe. Wandering towards the void, a large, dangerous, silent nothingness, Červený’s statuesque figures define the monumental scale of cosmic architecture: they are the measure of the immeasurable height of the heavenly vault, and distances are established according to their footsteps. The longer man can walk, the more he knows, the more he is able to define the limits of his reach, and the more his memories become sedimented. He must always come back to those memories at the end of his path, as they are the only assurance he has left. One need not look for long at the antediluvian face of those figures to divine the artist’s wish to locate them outside measurable time,[5] in a place in which creation allows itself to be conflated with reconstruction. Those figures, whose age cannot be determined, seem to be hostages to the “atavism of a robust fantasy”[6] and doomed to an eternal, vertiginous return of the same.[7] First and foremost, they teach us that every place is an invention, even when it actually exists.

***

The journal Arte em São Paulo, in its number 29, published in March 1985, presented an op-ed signed by 23 artists, collectors, and art dealers who tried to assess contemporary Brazilian art, reflect its new values, and identify its main “radiating centers.” Implementing the journal’s premises, they undertook to present their own concept of art. The journal’s bold design (similar to a sketchbook, with hard cover and spiral binding) reflected the urgency of renewed experiments with art and the need for spaces which could propagate the thought of the celebrated generation of artists that emerged in the 1980s. Alex Červený, then only 22, was one of the youngest among them. He had in his resumé no more than one solo exhibition, held one year before at a gallery in Belém on the recommendation of Valdir Sarubbi, his friend and teacher. With his independent training, far from the academic scene in São Paulo—where he was born and raised and he still lives—and completely oblivious to the major artistic groupings of the age, Červený used to hang out in two places: Selma D’Affre’s studio, where he perfected his knowledge of printing techniques, and a circus arena where he played the character “Elastic Elvis, the Plastic Man,” his alter ego, which later materialized in his famous contorted, screwy figures. In his text, he looked over his own generation while looking for a place where he could fit inside it:

My generation has had several findings about the modern world. Things that used to be seen as science fiction have now become reality: television, laser, microwaves, satellites, rockets, comets, intimations of Armageddon, and our own closeness to the eagerly awaited year 2000. These things make me think a lot. We live in a fertile age for creation. But one thing scares me: everything is too apparent, too fast.

My work is more directed to the past. I like history. I’m guided by old charts and maps. I sometimes feel like one of those artists who channel spirits. I make many imaginary

portraits. Antique writings and scribbles, which I have made myself or found lying about, give me an Ariadne’s thread to unravel and fantasize on. Paper is the favorite medium for the work that I do.[8]

With quite a bit of dismay, excitement, and anguish, Červený lived through a time that became one of the victims of history shortly after its inception, maybe due to the inherent contradictions of the age: the 80s’ Generation, pervaded by feelings of desbunde (pacifist non-conformity), effusion, and lack of belief in the future, eager to overcome the traumas of political dictatorship and the dogmas of conceptual art that became increasingly established during the 1960s and 1970s, was eventually and violently impacted by the brutal AIDS epidemic. The movement for direct elections, the Rock in Rio shows, and the Como vai você, Geração 80? [How Are You, Generation of the 80s?] exhibition held at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in 1984 highlighted the speculative character that was dear to that generation, eager to probe the present moment and given to short-sighted improvisation. After all, it was a generation that coexisted with the neoconservative wave that took over the world, the thought of the end of history, and the haunting fear of nuclear war. The so-called “new media” weren’t as exciting as they had been, for they were already used in daily life; and the instability of hyperinflation made time move faster and faster in the so-called “lost decade.” While most artists went back to large-scale action painting and turned to experimenting with non-conventional materials and rough finishes, with little or no commitment to narrative content, Alex Červený seemed to be swimming against the tide: always keen on small formats, the fetish of parchment and Chinese papers, gilding, and meticulous, painstaking drawing, he increasingly made room for reporting and story-telling. It was not by chance that in the 1990s, when artists gave themselves over to installation and site-specific works, leaving devices and non-scenic apparatuses in charge of technique, Červený invested so much time in illustration.[9] In the second half of the decade, when he finally decided to experiment with canvases, he stuck to narratives that combined personal experiences and universal concerns: Quem não chora não mama [They Who Do not Cry, Do not Suck (1999)], which the artist considers one of his first paintings, blends the memory of a vinyl record that belonged to his father with an apocalyptic scene triggered by the memory of Enola Gay, the plane employed by the US Air Force to drop the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima in the Second World War. Party and war were brought together to express an imperative, almost nihilist continuity in face of certain chaos, and the same device was picked up and deepened by Červený in another painting, Sair, fazer compras, ver gente bonita, pegar um cineminha! [Going Out, Shopping, Seeing Beautiful People, Catch a Movie!] (2012), in which a storm of fireballs does not hinder a desire to see life go on. The imagery of doomsday, the collapse of humanity, the fear of the human species becoming extinct on Earth—all these reminiscences of his formative years in the previous decade became indelible hallmarks of his mnemonic repertoire.

Now, after forty years of a prolific career and almost two decades of growing disinterest in painting and denial of storytelling as a triggering element of artistic experience, Alex Červený’s work seems to have come full circle and rediscovered its peers, and now plays the part of a worthy predecessor for a new generation of painters. In turning 50, the artist faced the expected challenge of large-format painting, now turning his gaze to his own life. In Para além do bem e do mal [Beyond Good and Evil] (2015), Červený set up a meeting between humans and spiral beings hidden beneath the earth and the titles of songs he used to dance to as a teenager, set out in swelling lists that make up for the missing canopies of dry, bare trees. On the top of the painting, fifty objects evoke places he visited throughout half a century and speak of the pilgrimages of an artist whose driving, creative force lies in the mental spaces where error is unceasingly transformed and mistakes turn into wanderings. The greatest sign of such a transmutation is probably his habit of repainting, a hallmark of a restless, insistent artist who does now balk at revisiting his own artistic decisions and whose studio practice gives him full mastery over his work. Going against the speedup promoted by social media, bluelight screens, and camera surveillance, as well as hyperconnectivity-induced short-sightedness, Alex Červený’s work is a product and a producer of deceleration. It requires preparation and slow observation, and it asks the spectator to leave aside all easy, hasty associations. Each small figure that detaches itself from his brush or his pens stimulates the emergence of miracles, mirages, and marvels; his work stands out as a providential opportunity for the political gesture of dreaming and reimagining the present.

As I write these words, vertiginous mazes, lunar landscapes, floating emblems, fantastic sunsets, and enigmatic beings wait to be laid out on two panoramic paintings especially done for Pinacoteca’s exhibition, which this book, that the reader now holds in their hands, humbly hopes to mirror.

[1] Cecília Meireles, “Escolha o seu sonho,” in Escolha o seu sonho (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Record, 2001), 116 [1st ed. 1964].

[2] Roger Caillois, “Pierres contre nature,” in Pierres (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 93. Our translation.

[3] Červený’s work constantly renews a commitment to traveling and he himself is an avid traveler. We may quote as an example Um desenho visto do céu [A Drawing Seen from Heaven], a book published in an unusual format, in which the artist gathers drawings, photographs, and reports that reconstruct actual and fictional events that happened in his 2013 trip to the Sechura desert, where the famous Nazca Lines can be found. Divided in boxes that make up a stepped pyramid with a quadrangular base, the material adds up to ten chapters that are narrated by the artists as he takes his work apart. In another book, Todos os lugares [All Places]—which is also the title of an exhibition held in 2019 at Casa Triângulo—Červený sets up a kind of glossary of the things he saw in the trips he had made up to then. For more, see Alex Červený, Todos os lugares (São Paulo: Circuito, 2019).

[4] In this respect, see Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975).

[5] I refer here to a passage in the essay “The Quest for the Absolute”, which can be found in Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre 1939-1975 (New York: NYRB Classics, 2013).

[6] Rodrigo Petrônio, “Os lugares imagens de Alex Červený,” in Alex Červený, 2019, op. cit., 172. The text has been newly presented in “A esfera imaginal de Alex Červený”, Amarello, no. 36, 2020. Available at https://amarello.com.br/2020/12/arte/a-esfera-imaginal-de-alex-cerveny/.

[7] I refer here to the theory of the eternal return of the same, drawn up by Friedrich Nietzche in aphorism 341 of The Gay Science (1882).

[8] Arte em São Paulo, no. 29, March 1985.

[9] For over a decade, spanning from the late 1990s to the 2000s, Alex Červený collaborated extensively with Barbara Gancia. This collaboration began in her column at Folha de São Paulo and later continued in Revista São Paulo. It's worth noting that Červený illustrated dozens of books, among which stand out titles like Vejam como eu sei escrever (Ática, 2001) by José Paulo Paes, As aventuras de Pinóquio (Cosac Naify, 2012) by Carlo Collodi, Decameron (Cosac Naify, 2013) by Giovanni Boccaccio, and Fábula sobre o começo do mundo: histórias da mata virgem (Laranja Original, 2017) by Maria Cecília (Quilha) Gomes dos Reis. In 2005, Červený presented a series of illustration drawings at Estação Pinacoteca.