Mendes, Andrea

Andrea Mendes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"My photography is transforming by nature, is also dreamlike, I seek in my work to create new perspectives and possibilities through the magic glasses of the lenses, that also reads the real and lend to it formations, deformations and transformations ... "The camera lenses are for me as metaphor of the lens through which one can see the world and ourselves ..."

Andrea Mendes is Brazilian, born in Anápolis - Goiás in 1976.
She works as a photographer, independent art-dealer, curator and psychologist and lives in Niterói - Rio de Janeiro. Had an art gallery in Brasilia, the Andrea Mendes Art Gallery, in partnership with Aurelio Flôres between 2008 and 2010. Wrote several curatorial texts and curated exhibitions for artists from different countries.
Her work is represented by art galleries in Brazil and in the Netherlands.
Held solo and group exhibitions in Brazil, Netherlands, Germany, USA, Portugal and Argentina.
She has works in public and private collections in Brazil, England, Holland, Germany, Poland, France, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Argentina and USA. Had works published in books, catalogs and magazines in Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Argentina and England. In 2013 Andrea cames back with her activities as an independent  art - dealer and opens at her house the Casa-Galeria Gallery, a space dedicated to the dissemination, promotion and sale of works of art by artists from Brazil and abroad. Andrea Mendes also provides the particular consultancy of Portfolio review and guidance for photographers, amateur and professional, also at the Casa-Galeria Art Space.

Theater of the Oppressed Pirei na Cenna

The Group of the Theater of the Oppressed Pirei na Cenna was created in 1997.

Formed for users of mental health, their family and sympatheticals of the Movement of the Antimanicomial Fight to dialogue about the pertinent questions of the universe of  madness, using the diverse languages that the Theater of the Oppressed presents. Our proposal is to discover ways to stimulate the exercise of the Citizenship by the part of the users of Mental Health, concentrating in the equality principle and in the permission of the exercise of the differences.

I knew the Pirei na Cenna Group in the SFF – Fluminense Photography Society - RJ in 2006.    
Enchanted and deeply impressed by the play and by the actors, I called the group and asked them if I could attend the assay of them in the next Saturday, in the theater of the Psychiatric Hospital Jurujuba, of Niterói.
During one year and a half I’m realizing a photographic series of the assays of this fantastic group, that will be transformed into a book in the year of  2008, with the support of the Sabin Laboratory of Brasilia.
As a photographer and as psychologist, it was and it is a joy and an honor to follow the assays of this extremely special theater group.
I have immense gratitude to all of the integrants of the Pirei for allowing me to be their audience, to learn with them and to photograph them in the privacy of their extraordinary assays.

Distortions

"The most important in life is to have a plastic and supergelatinous nature!" Salvador Dali

- Series "Distortions in the intersection", made in NY in 2006.
- Other series Distortions made in Paris, Brasilia and Salvador in 2007 and in Amsterdam in 2008.

The photos of the series Distortions integrates a project in development, that I beganed in NY in January of 2006, later I did more pictures using the same technique in Paris in December of 2006 and January of 2007, in Salvador in August of 2007, Brasilia in November of 2007 and in Amsterdam in July of 2008.

I make with these photos an invitation to fluidity, to dream...

To photograph for me is as to practise my dreams still being able, later, to develop them in a slip of paper...

The lenses of the camera and the glasses of my collection, that does not stop to increase and to diminish, are for me as the countless layers of the unconscious, with its uncontrollable possibilities...

These photographs had been realized for the first time in NY during more than 40 days, from the same place, in the morning and at night, in diferent climatic conditions and in diferent conditions of lightning, over an intersection especially colored that I discovered there.

The painting effect and the impression of water draining are created by a special glass that I use to make the pictures. I don’t use photoshop effects to produce this works.

Collections

Barbara Sobel and Clifford Collection - USA
Collection Marcel Fleiss - Galerie 1900-2000 - France
Wanda Michalak Collection - Wm Gallery - Netherlands
Pawel Zak Collection - Poland
Collection Thomas Kellner - Germany
Joaquim Paiva Collection - Brazil
Tamara Kunanayakam Collection - Sri Lanka
Collection Chagas Freitas - Brazil
Collection Elda Harrington - Argentina
Collection of the Centro Cultural Correios - RJ - Brazil
Collection of Contemporary Cultural - ECCO - Brasília - Brazil
Galeria Abraço Collection - Portugal