Originally published in the catalog of Carlito Carvalhosa\u2019s exhibition at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 1995 and in \u201cCarlito Carvalhosa\u201d, CosacNaify, S\u00e3o Paulo, 2000 pp 19-20.
Translated by John Manuel Monteiro<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a certain vantage point, these sculptures may even bring out a feeling of disgust. Another view of the same sculpture will reveal something like a light and unexpected wing to us. And all of this happens without much hubbub. One moves continuously between one thing and the other. Hideous entrails emerge from the curve of a graciously contoured line. Or then a rude gash can lead us into a luminous space. Composed of opposites \u2013 which comfortably share the same environment \u2013 Carlito Carvalhosa\u2019s sculptures are like Columbus\u2019 egg. The principle that keeps them standing can be observed in all its simplicity: the wax that has slid down the sides of a cylinder towards the ground. If it were cooled down too fast, the wax would remain intact in a cylinder. If it were to be removed from the mold too soon, all would be lost. But when the wax is just the right temperature, the artist can control its dripping. Like candles approaching their end, while there is still a trace of their original form, what remains performs the small miracle of keeping the \ufb02ame solid. For it is something in the incessant change of appearance that is captivating as we observe the \ufb01re they produce. Solid, yet empty; opaque, yet translucent; abstract, yet suggesting the shape of animals; the play between opposites does not stop. Fatigued, almost clumsy, they slide towards the ground much more awkwardly than adroitly. What really matters is not the catastrophy or the ill success to which they may lead. They defy failure, they dis\ufb01gure forms, however without erasing altogether the memory of an earlier order. Within this we \ufb01nd a way of expressing the world. Something of \u201cliving dangerously\u201d, of the \u201cimpurity of white\u201d, and of so many other \ufb01gures of speech we must use to describe a world where life and survival are confused, where lives and works that capsize remain, even so, lives and works. But it is in the way con\ufb02ict is conjugated here that a feeling for the world is best apprehended individually. Softly, without any sign of creative fury, there is the quiet play between form and deformity. These works do not speak of con\ufb02ict ostentatiously, but rather as something both inevitable and to be avoided. This is why they are cold and distant. Serene moments thus prevail. If these works allow themselves to be ruined, they do so in order to save fragments of tranquil beauty which resist falling or burning out, or perhaps more precisely, which are products of these very actions. These fragments are not at all commensurate to the works, rather they stray around them. They break away as if they belonged to other places. And if that which is incommensurate generally aspires to greatness, this does not occur in Carlito Carvalhosa\u2019s wax works. In both his sculptures and paintings, what is immoderate is so in relation to what is small, not to what is large. They are strategic points in the struggle against total disaster. Therefore these are works where there is nothing sublime, epic, baroque or in any way grandiose. No matter how many folds and spots they possess, they emphasize and preserve a small, lyrical moment. Excess, then, is not in praise of tragedy or con\ufb02ict, rather it represents a means of defusing them, extracting from the ruins that which can be saved. They are parts without a \ufb01xed place \u2013 spots and surfaces adrift \u2013 but which are not at all missing, if we allow ourselves to break away with them<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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