Rodrigo Franzão is a contemporary Brazilian mixed media artist. He uses such materials as textile, copper wire, needle, thread, vinyl polyacetate, oil and acrylic, creating and shaping geometric forms to create his works. His focus on every day, preferably industrial, materials underlines his predilection for the materials that surround the human being, whether he is wearing it on the skin or in daily life, directly or indirectly.
Background
Franzão was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on April 27, 1982. His mother, who worked as a seamstress, had various materials and tools, while his father was active in metallurgy. From this he drew his passion and inspiration for making his unusual artworks.
Education
Rodrigo Franzão studied Language Arts at the University of São Marcos between 2002 and 2004. During his studies, the artist learned concrete poetry in Brazilian literature classes. Since then, he became interested in geometric abstraction.
From 2008 till 2011 Rodrigo Franzão attended Psychopedagogy, Art Therapy and Communication Art education classes at the São Paulo State University. Consequently, his evolution as an artist vividly manifested itself during his tenure at the Architecture and Urbanism College, University of São Paulo (2011) which emphasized spatial organization and visual communication. In 2013 he enrolled in the Claretian University Centre, Brazil, with an intention to gain a greater understanding of the historical, social and aesthetic context of art.
Career
At the beginning of his career, Franzão was a teacher of the Portuguese language and Brazilian literature. He taught for nearly a decade. During this time, he had a chance to combine art into his classes. Gradually his artistic process began to evolve. Apart from geometric abstraction, he was influenced by constructivist art. He said that he expressed himself in such a way with the aim of revealing the transparency that exists through the use of every day materials.
Rodrigo Franzão exhibited his first series of works entitled Involuntary Exclusion at Anexxo Gallery in Brazil. In 2014 he presented this series of works in the Supreme Court Museum in Brasília, a public museum with the architecture by Oscar Niemeyer. The same year, Franzão introduces his brand-new series of works in the National Arts Club in New York City, private club founded in 1898 by Charles DeKay, who is known to be an art and literary critic of the New York Times to "stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts." His well-known exhibit titled "Katharsis" presented works inspired in the human body, showing at first plan the structures that sustain all the biological condition in the human being. It was held in 2015. In 2016 his solo exhibition "Surface and Abstractions" took place at Odivelas Exhibition Center in Lisbon, Portugal.
Among the group exhibitions that Franzão attended with his work, deserve special mention the following: in 2015 "Between The Lines: Exploring Drawings" at National Arts Club in New York, United States, and in 2015 "Fibremen 5 - The International Biennial on Textile Art" at Scythia in Kherson, Ukraine.
Rodrigo Franzão uses mixed media to show the trivia and structure that fragment into dispersion, gap and sound. He finds inspiration in almost everything that surrounds the human universe. He mixes two-dimensional and three-dimensional effects, creating a relationship of dependency between both. Besides geometric abstraction, he plays with bright colors, which are crucial in his artworks. His main sources of inspiration are works of Eva Hesse. Roberto Burle Marx, Josef Albers, Kansuke Yamamoto, Sheila Hicks, Nelson Leirner.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Robert Yahner: "Franzão is one of the most dynamic and provocative artists among Brazil's new generation of talent. Enlightened by an early background in Literature and Communications, the work of Rodrigo Franzão reveals an incantatory discourse between the artist, his vision and his uninhibited involvement with found materials. Katharsis transforms this dialogue into an exploration of the human form moving from aspects of beauty to biological condition. The grounding force of Franzão's line combined with the vibrant play of geometric abstraction gives Katharsis a rhythmic power. The work is further enhanced by the artist's facile use of mixed media and a brilliant sense of color - an echoing pulse of his native country."