As Aventuras de Qualquer Coisa [The Adventures of Something] is the latest book of the illustrator André Ruivo, scheduled to be released in early November.

The illustrator enjoys books, and this Aventuras, issued in A6, pocket edition, is a celebration of colour.

Luminously coloured backgrounds establish a sharp contrast with the characters’ bountiful palettes, which, either alone, or in concatenation with cats or other characters, roam throughout the city, unfurling unfathomable dialects, or diluting themselves in the landscape, following wordless conversations, repeated speeches, and elaborated compilations.

For the illustrator, the characters in this book have small lines, “conclusion-driven thoughts”, which emerge as they roam throughout the city.

Nonetheless, As Aventuras de Qualquer Coisa reminds us of a current illustration trend which is focused on understanding and aggregating the complexity of the world, allowing the vulnerability and uniqueness of the characters. Their qualms, imperfections and flukes.

Ruivo, with his drawings, operates within something that, according to a human temperament, is understood by the multiple and the diverse. It uncovers the human nature, without excluding or ignoring its different tones, whether these are lighter or darker.

Also, in the field of operability, he problematizes the subjective dimension of illustration, which, in his broader standpoint, challenges or adds something to the graphic designer’s work, and, simultaneously, the graphic designer adds coherence to the work of the illustrator. Something quite blatant in this book, but even more so in his previous Retratos [Portraits].

Illustration has room for undefinition, and is open to expressive, experimental and individual poetics.

The colour, in the tiny book of André Ruivo, is amplified, and leads us to a reflection on the perceptive phenomena. So to speak, it leads us to the “understanding amid the possibility of things”, and their “effectiveness”. The Eskimos, as we know, can distinguish at least seven different shades of white; and the book Aventuras de Qualquer Coisa reveals a broad spectrum of colours, between green, blue, red; in an intense game of contrasts, and in a colour perspective as a relation to other colours. Therefore, unveiling the cultural dimension of knowing how to see. Colour is culture and, in André Ruivo’s drawings, it results in a psychedelic reverberation.

(Book launching on 10 November, at Galeria Monumental, edited by Stolen Books and paging by Ideias com Peso.)