Kitsch Glitz | Paula Marcondes

KITSCH GLITZ SERIES

Kitsch Glitz is rooted in the Pop movement. Like Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Jim Dine, the series begins with a readymade gesture: the discarded object that refuses its original form and becomes something else entirely. The series has a performative and theatrical dimension. Many of the works require the presence of the observer to be completed: Approaching my shadow illuminates as the observer approaches its dark side. Anesthesia leads the viewer along a row of copper hearts to a solitary light bulb at the end. The heart on burnt wood in We are all superheroes does not answer, it asks. Theatre without a stage.

Untitled (2023) is the origin of the series. Handle with care (2023) extended the gesture, investigating what we carry with care and what we allow to break.

In Approaching my shadow (2023), the anatomical heart made its first appearance: a popular symbol stripped of its original context and reloaded with new meaning, built into mirrors of human-scale proportions. The sculpture illuminates as the observer approaches its dark side. Light and shadow entered the series as active forces.

I see you (2023) brought light through a photograph of an abandoned house in Kulusuk, Greenland, layered with a family photograph. The shadow of a domestic space became a portal. Going home (2023) and Holding the space (2023) deepened this vocabulary: the mailbox as the threshold between the private and the shared, a pandemic painting finding light through a repurposed industrial part that became a procession candle holder. In Collecting the pieces (2023), industrial parts from a garage dump became an anatomical heart layered across sheets of glass.

Connecting the dots (2023) encases the family photograph in an oversized frame of bubble wrap painted in gold: the most disposable of materials made baroque, opulent, indistinguishable from precious. A combine in the tradition of Rauschenberg. The kitsch and the glitz, inseparable.

With Daily bread (2023), As we forgive (2023), and Blessed fruit (2023), resin entered as the binding material: transparent, weight-bearing, allowing light through. The anatomical heart as the seat of feeling, the house as the self, the hand as the agent of care, the mailbox as the threshold between the private and the shared: popular symbols assembled around sources of illumination in a territory where spirit, nature, culture, and consumption intertwine.

We Are All Superheroes I, II, III & IV (2023) returns to the anatomical heart, drawn in graphite and stamping on hand-made paper mounted over wood burnt by the artist on a bbq grill, suspended on steel cable. Four open hearts. What does it cost to remain open? What does it mean to be vulnerable in a world that rewards performance? The heart on burnt wood does not answer. It asks.

Anesthesia (2023) is where the series reaches its most radical point. An installation of hand-sculpted copper hearts treated with red wine, sweat, holy water, polluted water from the Rio Pinheiros in São Paulo, Rivotril, semen, and saliva. At the end of the row, a light bulb. Embedding the substances of contemporary life into the material is itself a Pop gesture: the conviction that what we consume, secrete, pray with, and pollute is repurposed as art.