statements

Paintings:

In my paintings I am tapping in the Reinhardt’s critical discourse of the end of painting, the black canvas as its death.  This encircles my present studio study for I have taken concern with such thoughts, and though marveled at its intellectual intrigue, for they were never just black (black never is), I implore the role of the Black as that of exploring the possibility of an unending search; why relate to black as an ending and not as a beginning?  Such a search is done with subject matters which highlight the conditions of ‘black’ and ‘blackness’, both as color (historically loaded currency) and culture, (subjectifications of an otherness; a peoples).  Its materiality skims the mastering of Matisse’s line drawings and paper cutouts, comments on Modernity’s primitive search and the Surrealist’s inhibitions and wonder.  Light literally and metaphorically becomes my mediator, for it sheds it self in confrontational form.  I am most interested in the truculent space provided by their installations.  I work with reflective surfaces involving the viewer in an investigative priori where the black canvas hangs distilled.

Poster Statement:

My Cover series touches on those surreal moments when what we feel stands for more then what we see. Our subject oriented Magazine Covers are inviting of such conspiratorial concerns, yet we are often left without substantial proof. The cover has an onus to many; and such burdens are implicit with scientific methodologies. Its alluring Front is an area of high concentration; it is its own legitimized science. In these works I intrude on such sciences and fixate ulterior motives, re)sighting their goals, but limiting my intrusive concerns to subtle shifts. With such freedoms I create friction filled spaces of social critics, giving Real space to a surreal encounter.

Literary Statement:

My literary works focus on the issues of immigration, longing, displacement, bi-nationalities, hybridity and impermanence.  They locate and investigate the spaces between the real and the surreal, fantasy and blatancy, fiction and bi-fictions.  Paths of separate focuses are paralleled in my works; made to walk adjacent; with often fractious outcomes.  Having multiple nationalities and personal contrasting identifiers is a mist in hopes of clarities, of pushing winds which can often give sight; these are my work’s challenges and outcomes.  Though much a reflection of self, they skate the thin ice of contemporary queries, of this global home filled with webs, our compartments.

bio

Antonio Da Veiga Rocha is an international interdisciplinary artist and writer.  His installation paintings focus on Africans, The Diaspora and The Sea and inquire about our human position on remembrance and Right.  His writings and performances locate the spaces of the real and the surreal, fantasy and blatancy, dictions and contradictions on issues of immigration, longing and impermanence.  He is also an artist who emphasizes improvisation in art making, numbing the space of creativity and the everyday.  Most recently he has founded CICER, a residency in Cape Verde for international persons of cultural interest.  Antonio has exhibited and read in Europe, West Africa and North America.  Born in Lisbon, Portugal, he is a descendant of Cape Verdean parents.  He received a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago thanks to a SAIC Merit Scholarship and an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London College, thanks to the Antonio Cerino Scholarship fund from the Rhode Island Foundation.  He resides in both, London, UK and Rhode Island, USA.