The Roman Emperor Constantine, who reigned from 306 to 337 C.E., attributed his conversion to Catholicism to a dream in which he saw an angel carrying a cross. The widely told myth inspired a 15th-century fresco by Piero della Francesca, but the shift is likely more due to political convenience than divine intervention.
Brazilian artist André Griffo explores Francesca’s fabled fresco in two works, The Sleep of Constantine and The Dream of Constantine, his first foray into abstraction. Staged alongside his hyperrealistic paintings, Griffo examines the contemporary implications of Christianity, colonialism, and craft in his U.S. solo debut at Nara Roesler's New York out post, on view through Dec. 21.
By putting architecture and painting in dialogue, Griffo explores the boundaries of divinity and oppression, granting the holiness of a church and a subway stop the same reverence. Playing with scale and the abandonment of ruins, he maintains a stylistic and thematic throughline, as the show moves viewers through form and illusion.
The exhibition, titled “Exploded View,” highlights the universality that can be found within the precision of Griffo’s work. His biographical painting 80’s, depicting his brother in the bathroom of an LGBT Center in New York in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, particularly captures the exhibition’s thematic resonance of space and oppression in the U.S.
Below, CULTURED speaks to Griffo about his early inspirations, what he wants Americans to understand about Brazil, and the political implications of his practice.
CULTURED: Your work focuses on the sociocultural implications of architecture, often without human subjects. In the few occasions where humans are included, they are usually presented off-center. What made you turn to such spaces to explore human social structures and power dynamics, especially within the context of religion?
André Griffo: I began looking into the architecture of abandoned places as a way of exploring the idea of ruins, which progressively brought me to understanding architecture as a vehicle for passing on information about the main subject of my artistic practice today, which is that of religion and its use as a tool for social control throughout history.
CULTURED: So much of your work is rooted in Brazilian history and culture. As you open your first solo show in the United States, how do you see the work fitting into the local context?
Griffo: Both countries have been marked by a history of colonial domination, and have experienced great historical violence through slavery. To this day, both countries are living with the consequences of these historical processes, with ongoing issues like inequality and violence. I believe that the exhibition will help us reflect on these facts, though my work employs a language that is quite specific to Brazil’s history, with many representations of Portuguese Baroque settings that immediately evoke the historical baggage in Brazilian culture, which is different to the aesthetics that would have that same effect for Americans.
CULTURED: How does the exhibition title, “Exploded View,” and its context of utility and deconstruction inform your intended experience for visitors?
Griffo: The title of the exhibition refers to the technical drawing of the same name, which consists of a diagram showing a relationship or sequence of assembly of various parts of a whole. This concept is present in the exhibition through a sequence of four works, three paintings, and an installation, which form a linear whole guided by this idea of exploded perspective. This installation begins with a large-format painting, the largest painting in the exhibition, from which begins a sequence of layers (two other paintings) that highlight the layers of ornaments in a church until we reach the saint: in this case, Jesus on a 19th-century pedestal, which is the last piece in the sequence.
CULTURED: Your piece 80’s is a biographical depiction of your brother in New York during the AIDS epidemic and one of the rare pieces in which you depict a human subject. What does it mean to you to present this painting in New York, and how does it inform the pervading themes in your work?
Griffo: 80’s is a painting with a personal theme. Still, it engages with themes that I have dealt with in my paintings, especially concerning religion and constructed moral standards that are, above all, exclusionary. I portray my brother sitting in the bathroom at the LGBT Center in New York, where Keith Haring's work Once Upon A Time from 1989 is located, which is the same year my brother emigrated to the United States in search of the freedom to live out his sexuality. During the AIDS epidemic, the LGBTQIA+ community was blamed and marginalized, and Haring's painting expresses precisely the anguish brought on by these issues, which my brother experienced directly, having to survive social repression.
CULTURED: Your use of contemporary architecture is mirrored in the painting The seller of miniature characters 8. Why did you select a subway as the setting for this piece while much of the exhibition focuses on more classically religious architecture?
Griffo: In 2019, my work was heavily focused on historical themes. However, Brazil was going through a problematic period that began with the parliamentary media coup that ousted President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, followed by the rise and election of President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. A lot was happening and I needed to address those issues in my work.
The series “The Seller of Miniature Characters” was preceded by two works, To Whom Should I Pay My Indulgence and There Is Dirt Underneath the Dirt, which critique Bolsonaro's policies, his closeness with Charismatic Evangelical churches, and the military support he received. Not coincidentally, this political-religious-military combination forms the basis of the militias in Rio de Janeiro, a type of parallel organization that controls low-income areas through armed force.
“The Seller of Miniature Characters” emerges in this context. It features a fictional character who occupies train and metro stations to sell his figurines, representing the different power systems operating in the city of Rio de Janeiro: pastors, police officers, politicians, drug traffickers, and militiamen.
CULTURED: Tiles and walls are recurring visuals in your work. Is there something about these structures, and the way they delineate boundaries, that speak to you?
Griffo: Walls and tiles are like open portals for the insertion of different narratives. It's no coincidence that part of the history of art has been written on walls, whether frescoes or tiles. I am particularly interested in frescoes because they are part of my research on the origin of Christianity going from Byzantine to pre-Renaissance frescoes. Many of the references I use in my works emerge from the frescoes I study; this reasoning extends to the use of Portuguese tiles as well. I also think there is a certain cynicism on my part, in the sense that I use the same aesthetic tools that underpinned the ideas of beauty, the sublime, and the divine in such institutions to expose and confront values constructed by the church.
CULTURED: How do you manipulate scale to depict religious motifs and reinforce the social gravitas of your work?
Griffo: In order to create narratives in my paintings, I use various scales going from the amplified scale where you can sense the entire environment, which I try to depict as realistically as possible, to minute details, which the viewer needs to see from up close to understand. I think that the play with scale increases the stage to communicate more ideas.
For example, in the series “Farm management instructions,” I insert the landscape of a plantation farm inside a plantation house. In this case, I depict slaves in miniature scale to emphasize the oppressive nature of the architecture on the figures. I also include miniature figures in the series “The seller of miniature figures,” where they represent the different individuals that operate in Rio de Janeiro’s power system.
CULTURED: Your first abstract painting is included in the show. What inspired you to create an abstract piece as opposed to the hyperrealism that’s so integral to your larger body of work? And how did you craft it in keeping with the thematic and visual arc of the exhibition?
Griffo: This painting is not an isolated abstraction, it is in direct dialogue with another work in the exhibition, Jesus and his theocratic project for the 2000s. This work, which is figurative, is a reinterpretation of a mural by Piero della Francesca from 1452, in which he represents the process of the Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity. According to this fable, the then-General Constantine converted to Catholicism after dreaming of a cross before a decisive battle. Today, it is known that this was nothing more than a fable; rather, General Constantine legalized Christian worship as a political maneuver, needing popular support to become the emperor of Rome. What would Constantine have dreamt that night, given that even the Catholic Church no longer defends that fable as historical fact? The abstract painting is an attempt to illustrate that dream.
CULTURED: What feeling or information do you want audiences to come away with after seeing “Exploded View”?
Griffo: It is hard to define it as one feeling or piece of information, but the exhibition showcases some of the complex historical trajectory of Brazil, and its impact on its contemporary condition, which I think can be interesting for anyone who might not be familiar with Brazilian reality.
