Henrique Oliveira’s work crosses the genres of architecture and art, challenging perceptions and labels of sculpture and painting. Primarily describing himself as a painter, Oliveira started with oil on canvas and is now additionally working with his own uniquely created style of painting, with wood. It’s an unusual description but one that makes sense when visually seen, as the artist transforms the wood he uses into a three dimensional painting. It is easy to see the connection, his adaptation and reuse of materials is completely original, with the pieces organically growing. This is not just a referral to the aesthetics of his work, but the way the work is created, processed and executed.

With constructions constantly taking place in his hometown of São Paolo, the most common wood used for building houses is often discarded, and left for reuse by others. Connecting the visual similarity of the wood when broken to a brushstroke, Oliveira started to explore the properties of wood, and in particular, the wood of discarded tapumes.

The language of Oliveira’s work is inviting, easy owing, and connecting. It is multi-lingual. In any context, the viewer can enjoy the works and then experience it’s message through experience. It’s elements are a reminder of society’s reliance on nature, and the artist’s dramatically modest approach is a comforting reminder of this.

On a quick trip to London, we met the Brasilian artist at Duke’s in Mayfair, to converse in detail about his latest outside installation at the Centre d’Arts et de Nature in France, and his celebrated installation Baitogogo at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Oliveira has been busy recently, with travels worldwide seeing his work created in new environments in various cities, allowing new audiences to experience their power in the flesh. He’s only about to get busier, so we took the chance to sit down and find out more about this elusive artist.

CHAMP | You have been traveling a lot this year we have seen, especially for your work in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo and Centre d’Arts et de Nature in the Chaumont-sur-Loire.

HENRIQUE OLIVEIRA | Yes quite abit. This year I have been outside of Brasil, because of this residency of 6 months. In July I went back to Sao Paolo to stay for 2 months, then needed to go to Frankfurt for another month, then back to Sao Paolo for another month. Coming and going. I go to Vancouver, and then to Miami soon.

Maybe this is an important element to our daily lives and whatever work we are doing. Your heritage is quite prominent in the works, incor- porating your history into the works and sharing them inter- nationally, such as by using the tapume wood.

Yes, but I don’t always use the tapume. I use other materials too. The tapume is very hard to nd outside of Brasil, used plywood you can easily nd. I have done projects in the United States where I used found mattresses, rubber, metal scrap and other found objects.

How did you begin to use the tapume, and recycle this wood in your work. Is it im- portant for you to use recycled materials and is this a conscious philosophy in your work?

What attracted me to this material (tapumes) was that it performs like brushstrokes I am a painter, and when I was rst creating at installations that were more like a collage in texture, I was working with wood layers in a process that was very much created out of a painting procedure. The wood worked like brushstrokes. Some stirs were broken, had jagged edges and they resemble the kind of dynamics that make me think about brushstrokes.

Perhaps going back to its natural form also.

By means and form of the concept of the work, it goes back to this idea of nature. An image of nature, as it is not nature infact, it is only using natural materials. It is a return from its urban context to generic or organic shapes. In the case of Palais de Tokyo, I also used some tree branches to combine with the rest of the con- struction. I wanted to create a situation that you don’t know exactly what’s nature and what’s arti cial. The work also deals with this idea of controlling life and the impossibility of controlling life.

For me it also had a symbolic meaning, particularly in the structure that I recreated where I reproduced the pillars and the white beams that were corrupted by the strange nature, the idea of controlling life and the rationality and irrationality. There is a whole concept that changes with each project , even if I keep the same material and same technique, the idea is always changing, just like life.

When we first saw Baitogogo, it reminded us of architecture’s reliance on nature, with the two materials of manmade pillars and natural wood juxtaposed. It is nice though, that each viewer can interpret it in different ways.

There is no information behind the works, in the sense that you don’t need to know something to understand the work. Eve- ryone can enter and enjoy, and have a reaction somehow. The work can speak to people that also don’t know about art or contemporary art. They can nd other meanings or connections. In this way, the work is accessible to everyone.

Tell us more about the material you use, tapume.

I don’t find tapume anywhere in the world, so I need to import it. In Brasil they use this material because it is very cheap. In Europe I have noticed that they don’t use materials which you can discard. They use plastic, metal and other materials which are reliable. In Brasil they produce these wood boards in a very cheap way. They use them, but they get rotten very quickly. After 6 months, the rain and the sun damage it and it starts to fall apart. They they change the boards for new ones. That is how I obtain the discarded materials. Ofcourse things are changing, and more and more they are substituting this tapume for more durable materials.

You mentioned you started working with oil and canvas. Do you continue to do so?

Yes I never stop to do so. I paint in my studio in parallel with the other sculpture works and the installations. I’ve shown the paint- ings many times, but I don’t exhibit them as much as the installations as they are always made especially for an exhibition-basis. The paintings I do are more intimate in my studio. They sell for collectors mainly, whereas installations are more for institutions. The site-specific installations are usually temporary works.

Is this when you were invited to Paris by the SAM Art Projects?

Yes. It is a private residency. They created this residency to host artists from outside the axis of Europe-USA. The artists stays for 6 months, and they work the whole time dedicated to the end project that is a solo show in an Institution in Paris. It’s a great project, and the work to help this artist to be known in France. Lunches are organised every month with gallerists, collectors, curators, other artists and journalists. They do a good job. The place that I stayed in, was amazing. A very beautiful French studio with a glass facade..

Your work unintentionally has an emo- tive repercussion on the viewer after experiencing the work. Do you think this is important for art to have some sort of affect on the viewer?

Art is something that compliments the nature of the humankind.
It is something that doesn’t have a pur- pose in the sense of a utility, or something useful. Art in general, not just vis- ual art, music and literature for instance, they all have a purpose of complimenting the way human beings behave and need something else. We are cultural beings.

Art is part of this existence, a way of looking at the soul of the human.

It provides a different way of seeing.

It involves a lot of these aspects.
The perception of our surroundings, ourselves and society. The relation with nature also. What moves me, when I am creating works, is that I never think about how people will view them. I attend to what I am curious to. I am curious to see the result of that action and what is going to happen when I create something. We create something responding to our own demands and our own wishes and curiosities. We consciously and subconsciously know that other people will see it. Would you make art if you are sure nobody would see it? Is it something we do for ourselves, but knowing that someone else will see it. I think this is an essential question.