Artists Diogo Machado aka Add fuel to the fire and Paulo Arraiano aka YUP are already in London working on their show, a combination of styles from both artists to be fused in an exhibition at Pure Evil gallery. So if you’re in London next week, don’t miss the opening. Check flyer and teasers inside.
“Spaces Within”
YUP | Paulo Arraiano – ADD FUEL TO THE FIRE | Diogo Machado
16TH February to 26TH February | Opening Event 6-9PM
Despite the marked differences between their graphic and visual languages, long-time
friends Paulo Arraiano (YUP) and Diogo Machado (ADD FUEL TO THE FIRE) have often
collaborated on many projects. Over the years each has developed an extensive portfolio in
the fields of graphic and visual arts, working in a variety of mediums. Each has also taken part in a great number of individual and collective exhibitions, in Portugal and abroad. This is the first time they showcased their work together in the UK.
Both grew up in and live in the seaside town of Cascais, outside Lisbon, Portugal, and in spite of their distinctive paths they share multiple references and interests. They have developed a high level of understanding and familiarity which often borders on the complicit, turning their fertile partnership into an ongoing intuitive collaboration. It is this convergence towards a mutual space where both their differences and
similarities intersect that can be viewed here.
Spaces Within explores this point of contact where the two individual realms meet and overlap – an area which both reflects and transcends the many inner spaces and
territories their lives and work have created; a new multi-layered expanse composed of
myriad emotions, characters, stories, landscapes, colours, shapes and details.
Text: Miguel Moore
ADD FUEL TO THE FIRE / Diogo Machado (b. 1980)
Located in the outer fringes of a multi-layered imaginative mind, one simple glance seems enough to take in all the colorful, weird, funny, exciting, cosy and warm features of Planet Fire – the brainchild of Diogo Machado. And yet, the visual complexity of some of his creations demands a deeper, more meaningful look, as amid the stylish, dynamic artwork there are often small and unexpected details operating on a whole different level of meaning. In this duality of propositions – the simple and the complex – lies the vitality of his universe.
Ever since he set off on this journey, his visual probes have been travelling far and wide, scanning the lost worlds of B Movies, low-budget sci-fi, cartoons, Japanese Kaiju, animation, street art, video games and skateboarding visual culture, fuelling his creative drive and giving rise to a deeply ironic usage of these elements, highlighted with bright colours and a fun-loving feel to them. Visual balance, composition, and the use of wild typographic elements are often cornerstones of his graphic and visual language – a unique, vivid style that stands out in this current graphic-soaked culture of ours. Whether hand-drawn or vectorised, the energy and joy which irradiate from the confines of Planet Fire to the rest of the galaxy, act as the perfect tools to conquer drabness; adding fuel to help fire up the colourlessness that permeates our daily lives.
Text: Miguel Moore
YUP / Paulo Arraiano (b. 1977)
In the organic flow of lines, characters, shapes, colours and compositions that form Paulo Arraiano’s visual universe, there lies a duality that merges the natural and the artificial, nature and urbanity, emergence and creation. In the intersection between these two seemingly opposite and excluding worlds, he has managed to set a new-found balance which emerges from the primitive energy that flows between one and the other and is at the root of the visual language he has created and so intensely expresses. In this universe, the all-encompassing nom de guerre of Yup is an exclamation of positivity, an exhortation to life at its fullest, to the primeval motion which is channelled forward by means of those same lines, those same meridians that express the subject of drawing in its purest and most essential form.
Whether digital or analogue, printed or hand-drawn, Yup is essentially about a never-ending quest, an unstoppable metamorphosis of styles and an endless pursuit of balance, fully imbued with genuine love and soul. A quest for the roots, for the organic balance and energy motion that shapes, forms and sustains all life in this complex network of interactions and symbiotic relationships we are all a part of. A quest for a new writing system, a new language to bridge the natural and the artificial, nature and urbanity, which has become more and more abstract, more and more texturised, closer and closer to what lies at the root of all things.
Text: Miguel Moore
Where?
Location: Pure Evil Gallery 108 Leonard St London EC2A 4RH
Opening: Thursday, February 16th, 2012 – 18h/21h
Closing: Sunday, February 26th, 2012
RSVP via Facebook event
