“Our mental geography is anchored to what we experience in a physical place. Our bodies inhabit a space; if this location is familiar the process of inhabiting is invisible, without tremor. When our bodies are jolted out from the familiar, we enter into a state of heightened awareness and the processes of place-creation are exposed. The landscape of our mind is molded by sensory overload. Paradoxical feelings are unleashed and clash in excited confusion. In mapping these moments of transition, we are left with fragments, both imagined and real. This experience creates a schism of well-being, a schism of the self, as what we are able to understand collides with what we are experiencing in the moment.
Moving fluidly between New York and his native São Paulo, Gui Marcondes maps out his own explorations into the personal unknown. He taps directly into a mirage of imagery that reads as dream-like, unmoored, unrestrained. This creates anxiety. The images brood and boil over. They recoil from fixity leaving the viewer to speculate about place, meaning, and the intentions of the artist. Gui is not delivering a message, but providing a channel for new possibilities: The viewer becomes part of the map. We are enabled and emboldened to imagine along with the artist. We are given the compass to navigate our own indeterminate terrain and share in the human experience of uncertainty. We draw from his images a new cartography.”
- Brad Feuerhelm
