Gui Marcondes is a Brazilian artist
Episode 378: Gui Marcondes is a Brazilian artist whose new book, I know I Exist Because You Imagine Me, has just been published by Nearest Truth Editions.
Gui’s vision for his book is complex. He brings his vision of the world that refuses to delineate meaning for others and instead opts for a forcefully subjective view open to vast interpretation. There is a feeling of early German silent cinema in the work reminiscent of Lang’s Metropolis, the shadow work of Danish filmmaker Dreyer’s Vampyr, with some potential to read the city as a surreal playground in which a dark and permeating inner vision thwarts the usual tropes of street photography for something lucid and unnerving.
Having worked with Gui on his book for the past year, it has been an absolute honor to speak with him about his process and our combined love of Japanese photography. Please Tune In!!
Original Press Release
“Our mental geography is anchored to what we experience in a physical place. Our bodies inhabit a space; if this location is familiar, inhabiting is invisible, without tremor. When our bodies are jolted out from the familiar, we enter into a state of heightened awareness, and the processes of place-creation are exposed. The landscape of our mind is molded by sensory overload. Paradoxical feelings are unleashed and clash in excited confusion. In mapping these moments of transition, we are left with fragments, both imagined and real. This experience creates a schism of well-being, a schism of the self, as what we can understand collides with what we are experiencing in the moment.
Moving fluidly between New York and his native São Paulo, Gui Marcondes maps out his explorations into the personal unknown. He taps directly into a mirage of imagery that reads dream-like, unmoored, unrestrained. This creates anxiety. The images brood and boil over. They recoil from fixity, making viewers speculate about place, meaning, and the artist’s intentions. Gui is not delivering a message but providing a channel for new possibilities: The viewer becomes part of the map. We are enabled and emboldened to imagine along with the artist. We are given the compass to navigate our indeterminate terrain and share in the human experience of uncertainty. We draw from his images a new cartography.”
