ANDRÉ KOMATSU
“Autômatos”, 2017 – 2025
5 modules made of steel grating, mirror, iron, wired glass, fluted glass, cement board, and plastic
Variable dimensions
Made of iron, cement, wire, glass, and mirror, the structure of “Autômatos”, combines opposites such as containment and dispersion, passage and impediment, view and opacity, public and private. “Autômatos”, relates to the work presented by Komatsu at the 2015 Venice Biennale, where he represented Brazil. Both works engage with the comfort felt by the modern individual in situations of domestic self-imprisonment, such as the security felt when we hold hostages in our homes, surrounded by protection and elaborate devices to preserve our privacy, and their processes of
normalization. This work, among other venues, was presented outdoors in 2017 at the Frestas Triennial in Sorocaba, São Paulo, but also in a museum setting, as was the case in 2018 at the Minsheng Museum in Beijing, China.
André Komatsu
São Paulo, SP, 1978
Lives and works in São Paulo
https://andrekomatsu.com/
Part of the generation that grew up with the resumption of democracy in Brazil and saw neoliberalism implemented by economic policies in the 1990s. “The discourse on power and social conflicts, more or less latent, permeates the materials, influences their choice, and constitutes, in a way, the true raw material of André Komatsu’s sculptures and installations. Many of the titles chosen by the artist echo Foucauldian reminiscences, which exemplifies the way in which Michel Foucault’s theory of the microphysics of power, beyond the titles, is at the heart of his concerns and even, one could say, of his worldview”, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti.
"In my work, I seek to question the different ways in which humankind acts in the world, how we interact with urban space and established powers. How we locate ourselves and alter our surroundings in response to pre-established territorial limits. I
am also interested in the dominated element, be it man, nature, mathematics, or
architecture, and the continuous shift in the interplay of forces between them... a
constant transposition of materials resulting from processes of construction and
deconstruction, and a redemarcation of territories of power action based on simple
actions."
