Image courtesy of Gallerie Van Der Mieden, Antwerp
If you have once woken up from an unfinished dream, you would often curiously wonder what would have happened next; what sort of ending would it be? Caio Reisewit, a pre-eminent Brazilian photographer leads us from episodes to episodes as if we were viewing artistic versions of a documentary movie. Two extraordinary photo collage artworks: Tabatioca and Pirituba carry us through floating images from a late stage of a morning dream. Caio Reisewit is famous not only for his “avant-garde” visual effect, but also for being a pioneer in “the ‘Anthropocene’ - a name sometimes given to our own epoch, in which climate and nature are significantly impacted upon by human activities - large areas of nature, like those found in Brazil, are amongst those being most strongly affected.” (*1)
Tabatioca is an episode of a dream that ends suddenly in the middle while a rencontre between old friends is interrupted. A man comes out of the forest, heading to what is supposedly understood as the urban city. There is also a black figure, turning his head and back against the audience, being framed inside a modern window. A friend walking towards him from the other end, happily waving his hat above, can only be seen if the image is zoomed in at maximum. Maybe the movie could finish with a warm handshake of a friendship reunion that has lost touch and find each another on the path. Or it could be an unhappy ending when the person - who decides to walk away from the forest in favor of much-longed for urban life - finally receives a blind, cold rejection of reality. Would he finally join his friend in warm greetings? Or would he lose his way and step in the black city window that dismisses him? Maybe there is no ending as the dream would abruptly dissolve once the main character steps closer to the border between the forest and the window of "imaginary city". It is unclear which elements would take the lead in the end. The open possibility creates room for interpretation. By using rare angles and contrasting space to construct various crossroads within the Amazon jungle of dimensions, the artist has started the progress to introduce layers of presumption as the audiences’ curiosity intensifies. The audience has a choice to create a version of story on our own.
This artwork contains a lot of thoughts and conscious rearrangement of images. This is a built up work, especially because of meticulous conceptual and visual techniques. The artist must have spent hours of work to arrive at the optimal point of balancing emotional reflections, conscious reasoning and in the meantime having fun with ambiguity. The unconventional strangeness, slightly haunting, is very particular about this artwork. Broken images releases uncertainty to restless audience who have curious mind. This is a work of an artist who intentionally finds it compelling to organize conscious images while creating spontaneity randomly. He constantly looks for solutions from various paths and plays with a challenge of presenting dilemmas. He can't help but becoming personally engaged and playing a role in the scene.