One Man Fantasia
2010, 83 ceramic figures produced by Josevaldo Barros. Ceramic, Acryl, ca. 10x10x20cm.
The artisan Josevaldo Barros from Gravatá-PE, Brazil manufactures ceramic figures on demand, usually for resellers. The demand of the market for arts and crafts, as well as the developed style of the artisan, defines his own repertoire of the figures. Most common are the popular heroes and legendary figures from the northeast. I had left a plaster mold from the ONE MAN figure with Josevaldo and kept ordering new interpretations of different figure types as modifications out of that basic mold.
My Ideas and suggestions for orders were of diverse interests. Sometimes they are typical Brazilian figures which at that moment weren’t, yet, well known to me. Sometimes I tried to challenge him with funny Ideas and was curious about the outcome.
One Man Fantasia is an experiment about the imagining of world from different perspectives.
The distance between our livings, as well as the cultural and social differences, are the motivation behind this collection of figures.
