EDGAR DE SOUZA

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL [1962]

Over the last decade the Brazilian artist Edgard de Souza has produced a strong, refined and relatively small body of work. His highly seductive and painstakingly crafted sculptures could be associated with a certain finish-fetish aesthetic typical of the New York 80s generation (Koons, Bickerton, and Vaisman come to mind). Yet there is very little clinical irony visible in the distressing and silent eroticism of the work. Besides his oblique and quite particular treatments of a set of various bodily themes, there is something that distinguishes his work from his peers in the Northern hemisphere. One could very well assume that these perfectly finished works were carried out by a dextrous local craftsman; in fact, it is de Souza himself who spends months in his studio slowly sculpting them. In polishing and sanding down any visible expressive sign of the artist’s hands, his activity of sculpting bears a peculiar if not contradictory hand-made and Minimalist formal quality.