Stairs

This article is dedicated to my ongoing Stairs collage series. Here, you'll discover not only the evolution of my artistic practice but also the deeper reasons behind my obsession with collage, staircases, and recursion.

About me

I'm a Brazilian photographer and collage artist whose artistic journey started in my teens through the lens of photography. In 2003, while pursuing my MSc in Electrical Engineering I stumbled upon the world of analog collages. I was fascinated with the possibility of creating surreal artworks simply by layering a few unrelated images. Fast forward to 2016, my nomadic lifestyle (and the iPad Pro + Pencil) led me to fully embrace the world of digital collages. It was in early 2021 that I found NFTs as a way to store and show my completed artworks.

Stairs and Recursion

Throughout my artistic career, I've traversed diverse styles of collage creation, from complex multi-layered compositions to minimalist pieces that juxtapose just two or three images, exploring an imminent tension between subjects. I also delved into abstract geometrical works reusing one single image multiple times.

During my transition to digital-only in 2016, I naturally began to experiment with incorporating the same image multiple times in the background layer, harnessing the power of recursion to infuse depth and intrigue into my creations. In 2018, I had set myself a challenge: to craft a collage using one single image as source, this was White Stairs (see below).

Out of all the things I've explored in my 20 years as an artist, it's staircases that have fascinated me the most. To me, stairs show depth and perspective on a flat canvas, creating a surreal geometric 3D world on a 2D surface. In my ongoing series, I want to explore this idea and create a connection between the reality and some wild physics-defying dimension.

The endless repetition with variation creates a visual rhythm similar to music, with its patterns and motifs. I'm also a huge fan of music, specially minimalism, electronic and indian classical music. This series also share similarities with cellular automatas, in which complex patterns emerge from simple rules. I aim to visually explore this complexity, reminding us that beauty can emerge from minimal resources. The repetition and variation are carefully and manually crafted to create a unique visual experience that invites contemplation and introspection.