"About the series of paintings 'Cinzas' of Joao Werner", by Oscar D'Ambrosio

"Between the cistern and the fountain", by Oscar D'Ambrosio

“The cistern contains, the fountain overflows.” The phrase of the English poet William Blake (1757-1827) in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” allows a deepest plunge into the paintings of Cinza series by Jo?o Werner. Between the desperation of black and the peace of white, there is a halftone. The work of the Paraná's artist is right there.

He was born on October 27, 1962 in Bela Vista do Paraíso, PR, and had his first steps in the creation universe with the sacred artist Henrique Arag?o in Ibipor?, PR. Being graduated in Plastic Arts at Santa Marcelina University (SP) and a master of Semiotics Communication (PUC-SP), he taught in S?o José dos Campos, SP, and in Londrina, PR, where he lives.

When he retook his plastic work in 2002, he gives vent to the rural, urban, mythological, nude, erotic and abstract paintings in addition to the sculptures and embossed panels. In the gray works, however, he encounters the fullness of a personal expression between agony and spirituality.

The oils on canvas by Werner have the possibility of arousing the same feeling in the observer – inquietude – at the theme and the chosen images. It mostly occurs because he gives a very personal view of various mythological themes.

The Icarus image (on the left), one of the best results of the artist, for example, shows how the empty space of the canvas can be very important for the composition. As this renowned character did not follow his father (Daedalus) advice to fly between the sky and earth, he fell into the sea that takes his name nowadays.

Icarus is the plastic image that vigorously transmits the Werner's art. Daedalus was clear: Icarus shouldn't get close to the sea water because the salt would glue to his feather wings, but he could not try to reach the sun since the wax that glued the feathers would melt.

The works of the Paraná's artist are neither very human nor divine. These works are in this gray tone that fascinates because it is hard to define. The image of an angel with the wings cut leads to an analog reasoning, since the divine creature without its instrument to fly becomes human.

The Fallen angel (on the right) composes this same idea, reinforcing the Werner's gray painting as the creation of bordering beings between the divine and human. Thus Orpheus, one of the gods that is closest to men, appears with his passion for arts and is symbolized in lyre, religion and philosophy, being considered as a men educator that takes them from barbarism to civilization.

And, if the limit between barbarism and civilization is a characteristic of the gray paintings, nothing is more appropriate than the Werner's homage to the painter Gauguin (on the left, below) who abandoned a stable position in France to venture the south sea, rediscovering himself as a painter with hot colors and a sensuality that shocked the Europeans.

In his gray tones, Werner offers levitating images, pharaohs seeking immortality, plunges into the emptiness and naked nymphs in sequence. These are always beings between two things: soil and air, life and death, support and nothing, sweetness and rigid muscles.

If the color gray reminds of the combustion residue, it then points out to an inner destruction that is marked by the annihilation, mourning and destruction. At the same time, this feeling is along with the wish of reconstruction. In this back and forth, the Werner's art reveals all its strength.

As well as Icarus falls and becomes immortal in the name of the sea, the canvas of Cinza series by Jo?o Werner hurt when you first look at them, but amaze you because they point out to a new world: a world where there are no truths or lies, blacks or whites, but the remaining mankind ashes to be rejoined with an artistic talent, just like pieces of broken glass to be recycled on behalf of something bigger: the power that art provides for each creator to constantly reinvent himself with a capacity to interiorize the vital energy of cistern and the explosive strength of fountain.

Oscar D'Ambrosio, journalist, is a master of Visual Arts by Art Institute (IA) of UNESP, campus of S?o Paulo, and a member of International Association of Art Critics (AICA-Brazil Section). He is an author of ?Contando a arte by Cláudio Tozzi? (Noovha América) and ?Os pincéis de Deus: vida e obra do pintor na?f Waldomiro de Deus? (Unesp Publishing House and Official Press of the State of S?o Paulo), among others.