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VERTIDOS VERTER: From the Latin vertěre - To spill, to throw VESTIR: From the Latin vestīre - Protect or adorn the body I remember when I was at university in Rio, a graffiti on a wall said: Fighting is useless, the Sun will burn out in 6 billion years. On the same wall someone painted: What a relief! I thought it would be in 6 million. In nature, everything has always happened on a non-human timescale. It's true that one day the sun will stop shining, that life on our planet has an expiration date, but we are accelerating it, making it a visible process. In the last hundred years, we have burned more natural reserves than in four billion years of organic activity on the planet. Can we allow history to keep slowly? Luiz Simoes, 2004 The Vertidos aluminum, cardboard, plastic, tetra pak and glass. 2004/2005 Everything has cycles. The stories we imagine have cycles; we have cycles, and within our cycles, we imagine and create in different ways. In 2004, when the idea for VERTIDOS came to me, my thoughts were dominated by the vision of how beautiful we are, capable of creating beauty even in situations of hardship and scarcity. At the same time, I also wanted to reflect on our destructive capacity, so contrasting and inconsistent with our intellectual capacity. In the following years, different cycles led me to other visions. A second series of photographs emerged, in which exhausted and soiled bodies, adorned with our creations, lie on the earth. Years later I created a series of object-based paintings with those same dresses, in which the bodies are no longer present, and only the remnants of our creations remain. Today, twenty years later, in my current cycle, I'm starting a new series of works using the dust from those same five materials, aluminum, , cardboard, plastic, Tetra Pak and glass , and the question I asked myself in 1988, during my solitary crossing of the Sahara, returns to my mind: One hundred thousand? One million? How long would it take for everything we've built to collapse and for the earth and weeds to cover everything, forever erasing every trace of our fleeting presence on the planet? And my question today remains the same: Can we allow history to keep slowly? Luiz Simoes, 2024 aluminum, cardboard, plastic, tetra pak and glass , 2007 Aluminium Vertido Acrylic, iron pigments, polyurethane and aluminium dress on canvas in display case 100x130x10 cm Plastic Vertido Acrylic, iron pigments, polyurethane and plastic dress on canvas in display case 100x130x10 cm Tetra pak Vertido Acrylic, iron pigments, polyurethane and tetra pak dress on canvas in display case 100x130x10 cm Cardboard Vertido Acrylic, iron pigments, polyurethane and cardboard dress on canvas in display case 100x130x10 cm Glass Vertido Acrylic, iron pigments, polyurethane and glass dress on canvas in display case 100x130x10 cm Dust Glass Dust Acrylic, iron pigments, resin, and glass powder on canvas in a display case, 100x130x5 cm In progress Aluminum Dust, Plastic Dust, Tetra Pak Dust, Cardboard Dust Electronic Dust, Metallic Dust The objects In the poem "Adventure," the main character is a pot that the poet Manoel de Barros finds lying upside down and empty in a remote place. In this state of abandonment, the pot contained nothing but emptiness. Not long ago, this vessel must have been the center of attention, attracting the desire of those who wanted it close because of what was inside. Perhaps it received admiring glances because it contained something that awakened immediate pleasure. I imagine that this pot, now empty and abandoned in the forest, may once have been a container of sweets or ice cream. Occupying the center of the table, it received eager looks. When desired, the pot may have been mistaken in imagining that it was wanted for what it was and not for what it temporarily contained. Immense will be its sorrow now, abandoned. Rejected by humans and their fickle desires, only nature wants it. Nature never despises; rather, it receives, regenerates, and fills voids. Spinoza already knew this. Useless, the can was no longer of any use, except for metamorphosis, for that is what nature produces in everything that, receiving its care, undergoes a kind of contagion, a communion. "After dissolving in nature, cans can even enchant butterflies," the poet foresaw. Some time later, the writer had to return to the same remote place. He remembered the empty, abandoned can and prepared to see that sad sight again. However, during the intervening time, without the poet's knowledge, a little bird flew, by chance, over the can and left a seed in its empty womb. There was already sand and dust inside, deposited by nature. The rains and the winds gave the vessel's pregnancy the strength to give birth, and where there had been emptiness before, a living poem emerged. From that womb, a rosebush bloomed... "If we don't give our love, it rots inside us," the poet said, thanking the can for this lesson he received in the form of roses. Because the vessel was now filled with the beauty that nature offers us without asking anything in return. Elton Luiz Leite de Souza Philosopher. Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro The TV Pigment ink print and acrylic varnish on canvas. 100x130 cm A couple of chairs Pigment ink print and acrylic varnish on canvas. 100x130 cm The stroller Pigment ink print and acrylic varnish on canvas. 100x130 cm Coat Pigment ink print and acrylic varnish on canvas. 100x130 cm The motorcycle Pigment ink print and acrylic varnish on canvas. 100x130 cm The void Earth Acrylic on canvas. 130x400cm Darkness Acrylic on canvas. 130x400cm Expansion Acrylic, pigments and metallic powder on linen. 130x200 cm Void Acrylic on canvas. 130x200cm Absence Acrylic on canvas. 130x200cm Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos The work is based on the idea that, in a decadent and exhausted future, where the only resources are remnants of richer times, a character who has never seen a musical instrument would build, by intuition and with scarce resources, two instruments similar to a cello and a double bass, with which to musically express his lament with the dire situation in which he finds himself. The music is inspired by the continuous noise of the garbage truck accelerating its engine. Reproducing the sounds with my voice, I recorded several fragments and editing the takes in a time line, I created the whole sequence. It was the way I found to write my music without being a musician. The sequence, in its original form, was later performed by the cellist Ivan Lorenzana using the instruments built of rubbish, “basura” in Spanish, hence their names “basuróphonos”. “Requiem for two Basuróphonos”, is a lament, a dialogue between the two instruments, that turns around itself in a piece that brings to mind what we are doing… accelerating. Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos Audiovisual installation for three slide projectors digitally controlled. 7 minutes Musitekton - Barcelona, 24 de marzo de 2012 Iván Lorenzana - Basuróphono mezzo Ernesto Vargas - Basuróphno basso Interview Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos - video 4 minutes Making of Vertidos, Plastic and Aluminum - 4 minute video Making of Absence - 4-minute video Brasilea Foundation. Basel, 2006 Galería Blanca Berlin. Madrid, 2008 Centro Cultural Puertas de Castilla. Murcia, 2009 Gassmann Zürich, 2011 Home

Silent escape I do not search a descriptive landscape. Here you’ll not find Mount Everest or the famous peaks of Patagonia or Karakorum. Here you’ll find silence. Silence that can be in that mountains and deserts while I was there, or silence in which we sometimes plunge being surrounded by people. In each of these images, so simple, cold and desolated there’s nothing more than my simple intention of reflection about silence. Silence that can fascinate or scare. Silence from which many intend to escape and in which some escape. Kanderfin. Swtzerland 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Gornergletscher. Swtzerland 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Le Grand Capucin. France 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Brenva. Italy 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Kala Patar . Nepal 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Makalu . Nepal 1993. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Pumo-Ri . Nepal 1993. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Gorak Shep . Nepal 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Padum Zanzkar . India 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Zanzkar . India 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Ordesa . Spain 1986. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Cañón de Ordesa . Spain 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Muttehornglatcher. Swtzerland 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Cho-La. Nepal 1993. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Ngozumpa . Nepal 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Tsoh . Nepal 1989. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Prateleiras. Brazil 1990. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Itatiaia. Brazil 1991. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Kerzas. Algeria 1988. Swtzerland 1987. Silver gelatin on barit paper selenium toned. Home

What are you doing the rest of your life? Talking about my project "What are you doing the rest of your life?" requires going back to 2006, when I present in Switzerland my audiovisual installation "Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos", where I reflect on the exhaustion of resources. Imagining myself in a hypothetical decadent future, I built two musical instruments, based on my intuition and with no other resources than the remains of richer times; "basura", trash, hence the name of the instruments This was my first approach to sound art, which years later led me to create the project Music for 18 Things, in which, without being a musician or luthier, I built instruments for an orchestra and composed a musical piece, questioning what we expect from people, what we do with our own lives, or why, when we meet someone, the first thing we ask is what they do for a living. A long time ago, a friend accidentally played a piano key, and I asked her to repeat it. After playing it, she asked me why, and I told her it was the first note Bill Evans plays in the song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" Then she asked me: "And you, what are you doing the rest of your life, since you always say you're going to start studying music and you never do?" I decided then that this note and the next two would be the question, the raison of being of "Music for 18 Things," surely my most difficult and audacious work, full of questions, hesitation and a need to learn. After months of development, rehearsing every Saturday and Sunday with 14 musicians in my studio in Barcelona, dealing with my personal limitations and questions, both technical and conceptual, and after the premiere in Italy, then in the Basque Country and Barcelona, I decided to reformulate that same question, to repeat those same notes: Do – Si – Mi. "¿Qué - ha - rás?" What will you do? In a much simpler work, alone in my studio, using techniques and materials I know. And in a moment of needing isolation, "Què Faràs?" was born, full of references from important people and circumstances in my life, which attracted or repelled me, but which influenced me enormously, long before the word "influencer" existed with its current meaning. "Què Faràs?" was born as a piece, but remained latent for years, as a starting point for a new series of works in which I would repeat the same question, in different circumstances of life. As in other works of mine, iron oxide and hydroxide, and even the oxidation process itself, merge in gestures of expressionism and abstraction that allude to life and to the most fundamental of all questions: existence. Adapting the work into a large-scale mural format for Music Street in Jaime Lerner Park in Curitiba, Brazil, was definitely the catalyst that propelled the project, which had been waiting for over a decade for other projects, or perhaps waiting for a circumstance that would led me again to ask myself: What will you do for the rest of your life? And my heart beats… once more, and at the same time one less… I don't know, I have more and more questions each second. Què faràs? - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and piano strings on canvas. 108 x 193 cm Que farás? - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic iron sheets and piano strings. 7 x 15 m. Making of Que farás? Curitiba - video 2 min. What are you doing separated? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 113 x 138 cm What are you doing polarized? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano string on wood. 88 x 80 x 8 cm What are you doing screaming? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 140 x 73 cm What are you doing drowned? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on river wood. 110 x 20 cm What are you doing , influencer? Iron powder, glass, magnet and iron oxide. 40 cm x variable height What are you doing without books? Wood, paper, fabric, piano strings, iron oxide and hydroxide. 23 x 31 cm What are you doing muted? Iron oxide and hydroxide, string and piano dampers on canvas on wood. 120 x 80 cm Making of What are you doing , muted? - video 7 min. Making of What are you doing , screaming? - video 6 min. Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil - video 1 min. Making of Què farás? - video 1 hour Home

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and to dust you shall return …and to dust you shall return is a recently started project in which I am using, as pigments for a series of paintings, earths, sands and crushed stones that I have been collecting for decades in places I have traveled throughout my life. Although it is quite advanced conceptually and formally, it is still in the initial phase of production. BPS - Sahara sand, graphite and titanium dioxide on linen. 130 x 81 cm. Wandering through this immense desert, day after day I camp wherever I am when the magic hour of twilight approaches. The deep blues give way to reds, lilacs, greys, and black. In the most profound isolation I have ever known, I prepare my dinner, listen to my music, write, and contemplate the most majestic and bewildering of all skies, which crushes me down on Earth and fills me with a deep sense of insignificance. Like every grain of sand in this vast desert, how tiny and insignificant we are in the Cosmos. Algeria, Winter solstice 1988 ETHER - audiovisual installation for 4 slide projectors, light and smoke, projected onto the painting "My plans". 5.2 x 1.95 m ETHER From Latin æthēr and Greek aithēr: sky, firmament, the pure and bright air above. In Sanskrit "akasha", the fifth element, the space in which everything exists, which does not have the firmness of the earth, the freshness of water, the heat of fire, nor the movement of air... The Luminiferous Ether, which the ancients believed to fill the entire dark cosmos and allow light to travel. The very essence of void. Void, in which I find myself, and leads me to the unanswerable question... “the primordial nothingness”, prior to matter, to energy and to everything we have understood or invented. “The nothingness” that redeems me, that places me in my condition of dust, into which everything shall return. That shows me the nonsense of the whole and the whole sense of my brief existence, at peace with our smallness, with our irrelevance, our finitude and free from the search for eternity. Khumbu, December 2024 Home

When photography loses one of its historical roles, preserving the past, and becomes a social tool for showing the present, Frozen proposes a reflection on what we have had, what we have dreamed of, what we no longer have, and what we can preserve or rescue from our ideals and our human relationships. In the early 1980s, I received samples from Kodak of a new film, developed specifically for technical and scientific purposes. I conducted several experiments, and the image definition was the best I had ever seen, but the contrast was exaggerated, and even using ultra-compensating processes, I couldn't achieve the tonal richness I was looking for. Years later, Kodak developed a specific developer for pictorial applications with this film. Trying it put an end to my chemical experiments. Everything I had always sought in sharpness and tonal richness was there. Probably, the Kodak scientists had developed their developer based on the same principles I had been experimenting with. Phenidone as developing agent, sodium sulfite as an antioxidant, and benzotriazole as an anti-fog agent, but their results were better than mine. That was a turning point in my relationship with photography and made me rethink what I was looking for in it, beyond technique and science. When Kodak discontinued this film, I bought all rolls and plates available in stores in Barcelona. Knowing that at minus 20 Celsius the aging of black and white photographic emulsions stops, I left them in my freezer, as a relic waiting for a special occasion. Although film cameras will continue to exist, I decided to build a camera myself to use these films, as a metaphor for the effort to preserve or rescue what we cherish. A decade had passed when my friend, Manoel Morgado, and I decided to live out our long-held dream of a winter trek in the Himalayas, walking on the frozen Zanzkar River. In January, the riverbed freezes over, transforming it into the winter route used by the Zanzkaris for centuries. It was time to defrost the film, thaw the old dream, and almost freeze ourselves at thirty degrees below zero inside a narrow, shadowy Himalayan canyon. The film was intact, the dream still alive, the friendship still going strong. But actually, the first time I took my relic out of the freezer was when my friend Pepe Font de Mora and I went on a bicycle trip through the Sahara. It was 2008; Pepe and I hadn't seen each other in a decade, but our friendship was alive and that old dream was bigger than ever. However, the only photograph I took on that trip was about the failure of a dream. In 1988, during my long journey through the Sahara, I met a young Nigerian man on his way to Europe. The little he carried was his family's savings, invested in the dream that he would have a better life and one day be able to help them. Twenty years later, a tiny white dot on the sand caught our attention and we left our drawn straight compass line to check it... a human body, partially decomposed, lay eternally in that vast emptiness. Around him, there was no backpack, no bag, not even a simple water bottle... just a pair of shoes left a few meters behind. The last thing he had discarded. A deep feeling of sadness washed over me, at the thought that, in the absence of news, someone might be struggling between the feeling of having been forgotten or the pain of having lost a loved one. How fortunate we are, that things and even dreams or friendships can be frozen in time and rescued again. But how small we are, knowing that life cannot be frozen. Perhaps, for that, some pretend to "freeze the moment", as they say in photography. I've never had that expectation. Frozen nº 1. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 2. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 3. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 4. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 5. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 6. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 7. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 54 cm. Frozen nº 8. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 9. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 54 cm. Frozen. Video 2 min. Emptiness. Silver gelatin photograph on baryt paper and Saharan sand in a wooden box. 60 x 28 cm. Home

Luiz Simoes contemporary artist and to dust you shall return Oxide What are you doing the rest of your life? PROST Music for 18 things ViolaMe VERTIDOS Things Tempo 10 Tríptics Frozen SymmetroS Silent escape