2017 Residency:
Mateu Velasco

Mateu Velasco was born in New York City but spent the better part of his life living and working in Rio de Janeiro. He is one of a small group of multimedia artists from Brazil’s arts capital who have caught the attention of international collectors in recent years. Known for his distinctive, explosive style, Velasco has been hailed as one of the few young Brazilian talents who can move with ease between innovative styles, unexplored themes, and deep into the murky depths of the social conscience.

His work—whether it be paintings on public walls or gallery canvases, objects, or animation—flips the everyday humdrum on its head, presenting the viewer with a new vision of the unnoticed, awe-inspiring interpretations of those crevices in the waking hours that otherwise would escape our thoughts.

Velasco is a graduate from the prestigious Pontificia Universidade Católica, one of Rio’s premier Arts and Design universities. After completing his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design in 2003, where the young artist attended advanced courses in carving, illustration, computer graphics and experimental calligraphy, Mateu took his classical skills to the Rio’s gritty urban core. His street work in Rio is known for transcending common ideas of graffiti and helped raise the bar in the early days of the city’s street art boom.

The experimental style Velasco created over years of painting on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Paris, Lisbon, and Budapest has a direct influence on the artist’s gallery and illustration work. But, once removed from the hustle of public life, the powerful visuals from Velasco’s hands no longer fight for attention with the crowded urban landscape, presenting viewers with a thought-provoking focal point that commands meditation and introspection.

The artist’s vibrant, fragmented representations of life enjoyed for the sake of living are both invitations for repose and the starting point for an internal dialogue the viewer may choose to have with him or herself. His work offers viewers a break from a world obsessed with obsession, a chance to open the mind to the poetic possibilities of an existence withdrawn from the sometimes schizophrenic pace of modern living.