Sesper
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Sesper STATEMENT The work of Alexandre Cruz, also known as Sesper, originates from a mix of various media, such as collage, painting, drawing, prints, and wood cutouts, creating highly intricate textured forms and compositions. Based on experiments made on paper and graphic digital manipulations, his work takes place mainly on wooden panels, incorporating a wide range of objects on the support, making a direct reference to the concept of assemblage. Sesper finds his sources in discarded materials, such as posters, magazines, newspapers, photographs, documents, and obsolete equipment, often given away by friends or belonging to his own archives. His process involves adding layers of meaning to elements that already carried previous sentimental significance. Simulacrum and original are fused to compose scenes of a society self-disoriented by psychoactive substances, short-circuited ideologies, Catholic guilt, and branding. Sesper’s paintings and assemblages are commonly associated with the work of Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw. BIO Sesper is a self-taught artist who started his career in Brazil’s independent music and urban culture scenes. He strongly relates to the “DYI – do it yourself” philosophy, often associated with the alternative and punk rock movements. Sesper spent part of his teenage years skateboarding, making fanzines, and recording cassette tapes in his hometown of Santos, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. After joining various independent bands, in the early 1990s, Sesper created the band Garage Fuzz, one of the most important underground groups of the period and still active today. In São Paulo, he began to intervene in the streets with stickers and posters, adopting the pseudonym Sesper, while also experimenting with video, painting, silkscreen, and collage in his studio. Sesper has worked as a curator, is one of the founders of the seminal exhibition space Most, and contributed to the major show “TRANSFER”, exhibited in Porto Alegre and São Paulo in 2008. As a documentary filmmaker, he directed RE:Board, the result of extensive research on the history of the art created on Brazilian skateboards. Sesper has marked the course of LOGO Gallery since its opening in 2011. His work has garnered attention in group shows such as “Perturbo” (Disturb), inaugurating the gallery with his monumental collages and paintings, and “Marker”, presenting a perturbing installation: a viewing booth showing religious adult films. In 2013, he participated in the group exhibition “Deslize” (Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR Rio de Janeiro) and had his first solo show at LOGO, “Reprovado” (Fail), which was followed by a catalogue of same name. His work has been featured in national and international publications, such as Arte Al Limite (upcoming), Bazaar Arte, Elephant, Juxtapoz, +Soma, and is part of important collections, namely Itaú Cultural and Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz. ARTIST CONTACT [click to email] IMAGES
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