Rafael Carneiro - Balthus-Chiclete

2020
Oil on canvas
150 x 200 cm

Among Rafael Carneiro's most notable works, the painting Balthus-Chiclete (Balthus-Bubblegum), children with closed eyes, blind or sleepwalking, evoke young protagonists with a distant expression in Balthus' paintings (1908-2001). The characters that populate the canvas, run their fingers without seeing them, over a turtle, a crocodile and large shells, which feeds the enigmatic atmosphere. They are linked by an elastic filament of pink bubble gum that snakes from one child to another, in contrast with a turquoise background. The work is made hypnotic by its composition and the intensity of the colors balanced by their complementarity, with in particular the orange outfit in the foreground that revives the image. Rafael Carneiro thus creates an original narration by citing the history of art, mixing it with this unexpected element of popular culture: pink chewing gum. The artist's intervention is skillful, it offers an example of the extent of his visual repertoire and reveals his surrealist composition technique, the scene seems to have escaped from a dream.