Due to the excess in politics of contemporary life, a bunch of words is not enough – neither one nor the other image that is mixed up in the midst of so many others – bringing reflexive thoughts to life in us (as much as the sensations of affect). They go unnoticed throughout our daily readings – dazzled (while the feelings are anesthetized) by the too much. It is as if some argument in the form of word or shape, promoted by the excessive, was destined to a hesitant precipice of the imperceptible. That is why (also) that art, today, is so necessary. Understood not only as an object-work, but also from that which it is established and based on: consensus, dissent, politics, environment, culture, economy, space, time… Image and discourse in art are inseparable. Interwoven, they can be like a hard-fisted punch direct to our stomach – that more and more are acquiring tolerance to something that by nature must be kept intolerable.

Although the art institution has already shown signs of a lot of waste, mainly due to its complicated relationship with the market, it (still) is where we can glimpse some potential of emancipating dialog. I am talking about the complex process of “subjectivation” possible in the single relation of artist – work – audience. Subjectivation is a word that sounds garish, but the only one that better expresses what I believe to be the noblest layer of art: to become a piece of somebody.

The work that allows itself to be subjected creates, beyond itself, a meaningful net that is able to re-dimension ways of looking, and finally they change ways of acting. In this way, I try to peramble around the works of Renato Valle. Such an extremely systematic artist, who worries about art forms, is feelingly affected by the issues that are transformed into contents of his works.

Intrigued by the recurring convex aesthetics that are always shown in his own way of composing drawings and paintings, similar to ex-votos¹, he has launched himself on an investigative journey of something that would be behind the form that was very familiar to him: in spite of the artist already using such a language, he doesn’t do so because of his deep knowledge of the meanings.

Awarded with the Visual Arts Research Scholarship at the 45º Salão de Artes Plásticas de Pernambuco (45º Plastic Arts Exhibition of Pernambuco) – he went to Santa Quitéria, a district of the city of Garanhuns in the countryside of the State of Pernambuco – to get into the universe of ex-votos. He proposed to observe all kinds of social and cultural relations that took place in a sanctuary there.

Once there, he couldn’t imagine such an agonizing reality. In the face of the misery of those people – armed to face a life of multiple privations, with nothing more than their huge faith – he was tormented, amongst so many questions, by the marketing of such spiritual things. The ex-vows are objects covered by a fantastic dimension to those who have faith. At the unfailing confidence of having achieved a gift by the means of their faith, as an act of gratitude, the faithful gives back to the ex-voto the magic that has “transformed” their dream into reality.

Powerful, this very faith that gives impulse and that is the venture of those people (without it and for much less privations most of us, in their place, would consider that life had ended). Renato observed it perversely conducted in a mercantile universe (that shouldn’t have anything to do with spiritual things) in a way able to paralyze time, where there are no gaps to allow the existence of any transforming device. If on one hand, the person who buys sees the enchantment of their faith materialized on the acquired object, to offer it later on, such object is not less enchanted (although it is not always for the same reasons of the devoted faithful) for the one who makes it using their sweat and talent. For the one who sells, however, the ex-voto has nothing to do with magic, unless in the way of “making” easy money. Apparently the sellers aren’t aware of this perversion of the spirituality market (there are people who say that it is possible to live a same parallel in the current art universe).

Shaken by the reality that he found, after a month he started a project called Anonymous Christs (Cristos Anônimos), which deals with the mythical dichotomy embedded in the cross: passion and redemption. The research yielded a series of pictures at the end of the scholarship. Verticals, all of them are structured by columns that form crosses of votos and/or ex-votos, surrounded by repeated images of parts of the body of Christ, picked up from the work of other authors, adapted and used by the artist. The experience of this process would also come to feed his Diary at the point when it represents men, women and children with their arms opened in situations of passion and/or redemption: a woman who opens her arms to welcome somebody with a hug; a goalkeeper who is geared up for glory or hooting; a naked man in complete vulnerability… Anonymous people are also those other seemingly “Christs” and, most of the time, not noticed.

During the construction of the work, catholic symbolism gains weight in his reflection. In a not very distance pass, he turned in on himself, to his own religiousness, different from Catholicism, even though in the same way Christian, since the first drawings that form his Diary of Votos and Ex-Votos. Such a diary is not only an iconographic record of pungent events (both social and personal), but also an exercise of a spiritual dimension of compassion. On one hand, Renato Valle – always devoted to his research of forms – tried several kinds of graphite, sticks drawings (revealed by the grey dust), or kinds of colours that enrich the Black to be printed on the beige paper that would form a picture. On the other hand, with the diary he experienced a catharsis. For each drawing there is a “voto”, a request for a solution of a serious problem (at that moment he found himself co-passionate, co-involved) – as in the group of 243 drawings of missing children, made from pictures removed from the pages of the Justice Ministry, with the exception of a newspaper photo – or an “ex-voto”, as a way of thanks for that which had been healed.

Back to that which I said at the beginning: well, neither a bunch of words, nor an empty image, because they are amongst so many others, are able to remove from the state of inertia that which assaults us in this existence in which we live: of a lot, everything. Accustomed to the excess, we became unable to absorb (especially, reflexively) the serious questions which threaten us daily. It is in this sense that I think of art as an agent of changes.

The art institution, understood, beyond the work-project, as the environment that it creates – its own economy, its own politics – can dislocate situations from daily living in such a way that we can see them. To feel them. And, in this direction, to become part of them and maybe, by our own means cause some external alteration. The subjectivation, as it is possible to realize, is at the creation and reception of the work. Absorbing the excess of politics of contemporary life, Renato dislocates it and re-signifies it in the paradox, feelingly created, of synthesis and excess (interwoven images and discourses), in his diary-work, always armed with compassion. If by the excess of our daily living we anesthetize, by its excess constituted work-unity, Renato gives us the chance of a reading that is not dazzled anymore. We need to know if after being exposed to all of this, how much will become ours, how much will make us co-impassioned. On the other hand, it would be just another punch – like so many others, that passively we learn to take, tolerating the intolerable.