ROMULO AVI (1992) IS A PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER FROM SOROCABA, BRAZIL. HE HAS STUDIED ACADEMIC PAINTING AT THE FLORENCE ACADEMY OF ART WHILE LIVING IN ITALY, BEFORE MOVING TO the united Kingdom, WHERE HE GRADUATED FROM AN MA IN FINE ART AT CITY AND GUILDS LONDON ART SCHOOL LAST YEAR.
Avi is interested in negotiating the dynamic between control and potential within painting, shifting between conscious and unconscious thinking. Germinating from this constant conflict between abstraction and figuration, Avi’s work delves on ideas surrounding transience, memory, and becoming. He sees painting as an open-ended question - a space of internal contemplation, of psychological horizons and ambiguous images.
By repeatedly reworking the surface and allowing subjects to appear and fade, he produces richly layered, process-based paintings. Avi prefers working from a state of controlled jeopardy instead of surgically planning and dictating a composition: he would rather open a space of contemplation, of a psychological inward stare. A utopian space.
While his paintings emerge in a process-oriented manner, his influences range from the mythic and esoteric to literature and art history. These contaminate the work, which acts as an externalization to better understand both himself and the structures surrounding us, be they linguistic or metaphysical.