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PEDRO GANDRA IN INTERVIEW WITH DESIGN DÉSIR
Design Désir- When did your passion for art begin and when did you decide to pursue this career?
Pedro Gandra- I knew from an early age that I wanted to create fiction, although at the time I couldn't organize my thoughts. I was curious to think about situations that went beyond my everyday experiences. I also began to be interested in and want to understand the technical procedures of some artistic endeavors. I think these two factors led me to look for an art school a little early on. From then on, I began to create a kind of sense of the world through this lens of curiosity and discovery.
Design Désir- How do you define yourself as an artist and your art?
Pedro Gandra- I started exhibiting my work through painting and it was always painting that I dedicated myself to in the studio, but there was always a mixture of insecurity and a sense of freedom in not presenting or classifying myself as a painter. It was only very recently that I wanted to overcome this fear and occupy this space, that of a painter.
Much of this self-reflection also comes from the experience of being invited to artistic residencies dedicated to painting, such as the two-year residency currently underway at deCurators. This gives me the opportunity to spend time with artists who are thinking about issues related to painting and to do research around this question. The project brings together four thematic exhibitions that allow me to exercise my thoughts on expography and curating, while at the same time I'm in the studio dealing with the problems of my research and being impacted by all these reverberations.
I have dedicated myself to figurative painting, using it to present synthetic narratives. Increasingly, I visualize the work in an installation way, which has led me to other expographic solutions, where it seems to me that the execution of the work and how it will be shown are inseparable.
Design Désir- What is your greatest inspiration and what motivates you to create?
Pedro Gandra- As I said earlier, creating fictions is one of the driving forces, using the language of painting to develop a narrative shard, sparks of stories, remnants of characters. But more and more, it's also about dealing with materials, seeing how color reacts, understanding painting time (which doesn't necessarily correspond to the artist's expectations) and dealing with the unforeseen.
Practicing this craft also means establishing a dialog with the world and with everything that impacts you in the work of other artists. It's almost as if I'm in a flow, responding to all these stimuli that these works provoke in me through my work.
The other day, I was reading an interview with a composer I follow and when asked how she would define her work, she replied: “feeling, just feeling”. That struck me in a very intense way, nothing seems scarier to me than feeling! And perhaps that is also one of the primary functions of the artist's craft: to feel! And somehow articulating those feelings beyond the intimate.
Design Désir- How long does it take you to produce a work?
Pedro Gandra- It varies a lot. I usually work on more than one painting at a time in the studio, which helps me to gain a broader understanding of my work.
When I'm producing exhibitions, I can have up to fifteen paintings in progress, but that doesn't mean they'll be ready at the same time or for the next project. Editing what the artist produces is a crucial part of working in the studio.
I'm working on two paintings at the moment for an exhibition, I've been trying to complete them since 2018. I've thought about including them in a few exhibitions over that period, but the time never seemed right. Now seems to be their moment.
Design Désir- What's your daily routine?
Pedro Gandra- At the moment, I'm completely dedicated to the studio. I stay in the studio as long as possible. If I want to read, I read from the studio... I just don't answer emails or messages from there, my cell phone doesn't come in! I try to stay physically present as much as possible. But it's not always like that, there are times when the focus is on research or other fields, less on execution. It's a negotiation, but the studio is the priority.
Design Désir- What are your career goals for the future?
Pedro Gandra- My main goal is to always stay focused, so I create challenges so that every day the craft seems to offer new possibilities. I think this is the most important goal, the one I need to devote my attention to, which concerns my relationship with my craft.
Pedro Gandra was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a music producer and a director who is now retired from the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan). During his teenage years, around the age of 12 or 13, a prolonged teachers' strike at Rio de Janeiro's Colégio Pedro II led his mother to enroll him, at his own request, at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts. It wasn't exactly the environment for someone his age, but with a certain amount of insistence, Pedro managed to enroll and attend classes. He met artists from various generations, took the opportunity to immerse himself in various languages, such as video and drawing, visited artists' studios and became familiar with processes, media and techniques. He acquired a verve and a studio praxis that led him on several occasions to undo, redo, cut up and disappear finished works presented to the public, including gallery owners, curators and collectors, because he believed they weren't “finished” or didn't meet his expectations of what he believed art to be.
It was shortly after this period at Parque Lage that Pedro became active in the visual arts scene in Brasília, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Around the age of 14, he was painting the siding of a gallery that was being renovated. Soon his first canvases were being sold here and there. Soon he was taking part in group shows with young artists in commercial galleries and public institutions.
In 2017, the now Parque Lage graduate launched his first research project on the production of contemporary artists in an exhibition at the Correios Museum in Brasília. “Fronteiras da Pintura - Fronteiras da Ilusão” brought together names such as André Santangelo, Elyeser Szturm, Evandro Soares, Fernando Madeira, Gabi Cravo e Canela, Helô Sanvoy, Hermano Luz Rodrigues, Talles Lopes, TresPe Coletivo and Ursula Tautz. His desire to learn more about the artists' processes and modes of production led him to repeat the experience in “A construção de minimundos”, 2021, Referência Galeria de Arte, with works by Ana Júlia Vilela, Annima de Mattos, Gisele Camargo, Joaquim Paiva, Léo Tavares, Pedro Lacerda, Raquel Nava and Vânia Mignone. In these two experiences, as well as presenting some of his work, Pedro is an artist and organizer in the first exhibition, and an artist and curator in the second. It wasn't until 2019 that Pedro presented his first solo show with paintings in various formats.
Despite spending more than a decade painting and working with painting, it was in 2023 that Pedro declared himself a painter. And, as such, he begins to prepare a new project to work with the issues of painting. Without being bound by predetermined roles, he takes on the co-curatorship of the “Painting Cycle” project in partnership with GIsel Carriconde Azevedo, with exhibitions at DeCurators in a process that will last until 2024. Pedro's interests range from literature to photography, cinema and fashion. All of them materialize in oil, acrylic and charcoal on canvas. At least so far.