Watch Full Video

Fernando de La Rocque

(1979– ) Born in Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Fernando de La Rocque is a visual artist who continuously produces works in various forms, organizing them into series. One of the series that has expanded significantly is called "colonies," which includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, objects, embroideries, and tiles. These works always feature humanoid forms as the basis for all geometric and organic compositions. The little bodies depicted are always represented nude or engaging in intimate acts, sometimes forming landscapes, other times arranged in geometric abstractions, mandalas, or cosmogonic journeys.

"I start an embroidery with a short, straight line in some random spot on the canvas. I draw an identical line, parallel to it, with a slight spacing between them. These lines are enough for me to see an arm or a leg. I draw the third line, and the fourth, connected to the previous ones, adding new lines until I complete the humanoid figure - neck, head, torso, abdomen, pelvis, sex, legs, and feet. I connect a new line to some point in that form, and the fitting begins, and I keep embroidering in that same gesture until I reach the edges of the support."

"Flor" is the title of the artwork created for the restaurant Blaise at Rosewood. It consists of more than eight thousand handmade pressed tiles, fired, painted, glazed, and then fired again at 1200 degrees Celsius

Each tile's image is divided in half diagonally, with one half being a white background and the other half an embossed image of a female humanoid figure with blue body and red hair, depicted in a "legs open" position, that is, the "position of love." It represents the energetic state of water and fire, a posture of making love, a posture of giving birth, which is also an expression of immense, infinite love.

The location where the pieces are installed was originally the Condessa Filomena Matarazzo Maternity Hospital, part of the Matarazzo Hospital, which closed its activities in the last decades of the 20th century.

When visiting the site in 2016, I had just created this tile, and it was already called "Flor." The installation site perfectly resonated with the energy of that place and the artwork. It was a beautiful coincidence.

Some of the panel pieces represent transgender women, and some pieces feature texts paying tribute to my mother and other important individuals involved in the execution of this artwork - Sonia, Jaque, Miriam, Débora, Fosca, Isabel, Raissa, and my great friend Guga Ferraz."

The artist also took the opportunity to send kisses to Jazmin and Amarilis, divine flowers of my life, to be discovered when visiting.

Represented by the gallery: arturfidalgo.com.br/fernando-de-la-rocque