Alexandre Frangioni has been developing, since 2018, an extensive research that proposes a reflection on the implications of globalization in today's society. What, after all, has globalization brought to the world in a positive way? The pasteurization of the different and rich cultures of various world regions? The exacerbated consumption of products that, most of the time, we don't need? Or the growth in social differences?
The series "Made in China" was created in recent years as a humorous criticism of the current society, shaped by consumption that puts in jeopardy the preservation of nature, of the different cultures and beings that inhabit our planet. The repetition of the phrase Made in China produced with obsession by Frangioni is the same one we find in thousands of products we consume, many of them "faithful copies" of clothing brands and accessories inaccessible to the majority of the world's population, produced on a large scale by people living in extreme poverty in China and India.
"Frangioni's attitude toward ideas that may be difficult to conceptualize can be summed up in the following phrase: he transforms complex ideas into something as efficient and simple as an image," writes critic Christian Viveros-Fauné in the book One Art History, published in 2021 bringing together several of the artist's works. In other words, he takes marketing slogans that we see every day, even if they are implied in the most diverse ways, and gives them another context.
For centuries, human beings have used the repetition of symbols, codes, and icons as a way to impose cultures, religions, or habits. In the religious art of the medieval and Renaissance ages, the repetition of facts that occurred in the Christian religion is used to promote the Church, as the crucifix is one of the most repeated symbols in history and in our daily lives for over two thousand years. There is no brand, object or logo that has surpassed the use of this symbol until today.
Contemporary art, since the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), aims to bring another context or place to these symbols, icons, and objects. This fact is remarkable in the works presented in this show, as well as the antagonistic relations between issues that are also contemporary, such as quality and cost, sustainability and productivity, poverty and wealth, authenticity and copy.
This exhibition of more than 30 works by Frangioni brings together wooden crates that are meticulously redesigned, copied, and remade with the phrase Made in China, written in the manner of Coca-Cola and printed on labels that are "faithful copies" of those glued to the bottles of the soft drink, all done by hand, either by means of collage, painting, drawing, embroidery, or even printing, ancient techniques of art. In this sense, his work moves away from the "found object" so present in contemporary art worldwide.
Thus, this curious artist, graduated in chemical engineering, deceives our eyes. After all, are these works copies or originals? Or would they be original copies?
Rejane Cintrão
March 2023