An Imaginary Club

Both an architect and an artist, Alexandre Marreiros grew up in Portugal but has always considered Macau like a second home, having strong family ties to the city.  Currently he is settled here with his own family, and works for local architectural firm, Joy Choi Architects.  And recently he launched his latest exhibition Tropicalia Club at Creative Macau.

 

“Over the past two years, I had six exhibitions, which is a lot, three in Macau and three in Portugal.  These were the conclusion of a process I began five years ago, and after all this process, I felt like I had completed a cycle, and I was enjoying being at a point of emptiness, free to rethink and get back to some of my old sketches, which is an exercise I really like,” notes Alexandre about the starting point for his latest collection.

 

“This exhibition is about getting back to my archive, and looking at things that had potential to develop.  Uncompleted works, from drawings to paintings, photography to mixed media.  I went back and finished works that were somehow frozen.  In a way they were waiting for me to go back and finish them.  It was nice to go back to ideas that were forgotten. I was very happy to rediscover them,” he adds.

 

Alexandre notes that he his always drawing, always sketching things he sees around him, so he had a lot of material to work with. 

 

“Every day I draw a lot. If I’m out, I always have my little book and I’m quite compulsive in registering everything, and for me the easiest way is to draw it,” he says.

 

Going back through the archives of his unfinished work, the artist first looked for pieces that had potential to be developed. But he also began to formulate another selection criteria.

 

“One of the criteria for choosing my works was imaginary things, not only from my archive, but also supported by things I had been reading that gave me ideas to develop,” he explains. “I was forming this imaginary club only in my head, with all these guys that I really liked in one club: painters, artists, architects, writers, philosophers. So I created this concept of an imaginary club that I could be a part of, a group of people who freely associate, who share the same ideas, principles and values”.

 

As Marreiros began choosing the members for his imaginary club, he found that over half of them were from Brazil and linked to the artistic movement of the 1960’s known as Tropicalia, hence the title of his exhibition.  The Tropicalia movement was inspired by the similar hippie movement taking place in the US, but in Brazil it had to exist under the cloud of a military government, making it even more irreverent and counter-culture at the time.

 

“You can find all of these characters that have influenced me as an artist.  They are all there, but you need to look for them and discover them in the works”.

 

Both art and architecture run deep in Alexandre’s family.  His father Carlos is a prominent architect and artist in Macau, and his uncle Victor is also a well-known graphic designer and painter here in the city.

 

“As a boy I used to paint with my dad.  We would be in different rooms, but listening to the same music. It was a real pleasure,” remembers Alexandre. “But there was a period when people told me my drawings looked very close to my father’s and I didn’t like to hear that, so I kept them to myself.  

 

“Now I think it’s natural.  I grew up seeing those drawings – my father is always drawing – and I also have influences from my uncle.  In some ways, if you look very close at my artwork, you can definitely see something from my father and from my uncle, and yet it’s still totally different.  We are very, very different from each other, but we still can’t deny that we are family!” he laughs.

 

As for the relationship between his profession and his art work, Alexandre is not completely convinced that there is a strong connection.

 

“Ninety-nine percent of architecture is definitely not art, it’s investment, regulations, security, functionality, but one percent gives me the same feeling as looking at a painting or sculpture.  Of course you have to be creative as an architect, but in a different sense,” he observes.

 

But he does acknowledge some influence from the profession on his own creative process.

 

“In my case, if you look at my works, there are always two things: it represents a lot of space, and everything starts with a sketch, a drawing, a line,” he says.  “I don’t paint, I draw. I’m not a painter. I don’t know how to paint in the classical way.  Even if I use ink, acrylic or colour, above everything I draw. For both architecture and art you need to begin with a drawing.”

 

 

 

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by Alexandre Marreiros 

 

Until February 18, 2017 

Monday – Saturday 2 to 7pm

Center for Creative Industries

G/F Macau Cultural Centre Building

Xian Xing Hai Avenue, Macau.