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Between night and mathematics: Thomas Braida at Monitor

The deepest part of us lies dormant during the day amidst the routine hustle and bustle. At night, by contrast, the infinite cosmos above us and the surrounding darkness call upon the subconscious. Navigating consciously in the dark allows us to reach transformative and inspirational states, and so creativity is one of the most common expressions during this period.

Thomas Braida‘s first solo exhibition in Portugal is centred on the night, the period in which most of the thoughts surrounding the works on display came about. Mathematics itself is another important aspect, right from the title of the show (Mathematiche Notturne), which is essential to understanding the workings of the world, but also of our subconscious, which in this case draws closer to painting.

Meditating on objects that bring up memories of life and death is a common practice, and one that has been a constant feature in the history of art. Vanitas painting, which emerged in the Netherlands in the early sixteenth century, is defined by using objects that illustrate life’s transience – including skulls, clocks, candles, soap bubbles, jewellery, mirrors, books and flowers. The human skull is one of the most frequently encountered elements in paintings of this kind, such as Vanitas-Still Life (1668) by Maria van Oosterwyck, or others that continued her vision over the centuries.

Thomas Braida perpetuates the symbolism of the skull as a memento mori in several works by Mathematiche Notturne. In However he was a smart guy (2023), the skull as the painting’s main element comes at the very beginning of the exhibition. We see several elements inscribed on it, such as a laurel wreath and several reptiles, with a small human figure standing out and seeming to hold this skull with all its might. In The real Barbenheimer (2023), the artist paints a sea landscape whose main elements are an octopus and a human skull. In Message from a stochastic parrot (2023), the skull turns three-dimensional, a sculpture also made up of a black parrot referred to by the artist as a “stochastic parrot“, directly referring to a mathematical theory. The skull is the focal point of all these works, yet it is invariably associated with an animal element (the reptiles, the octopus and the parrot), offering a narrative that considers not only the ephemeral nature of life, but also the intrinsic influence of human beings on nature.

The subjects of Thomas Braida’s pieces range from personal stories to fragments of humanity, revealing an intangible world and depicting something existing or having existed in someone’s universe or dream. In dopo cena ci spariamo um alkekengi (2023), Braida paints a domestic setting loaded with details, where the longer you look, the more you find out. A wine bottle, a freshly poured drink, a hand holding an alkekengi, an open wooden box, a mirror, a tiny sculpture, a bird. As its title reveals (“after dinner, we throw an alkekengi at ourselves”), the work is the end of a dinner party, where the night is once again a subject and a place for reflection on our existence.

Continuing on the topic of considering the human condition, Thomas Braida takes the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini’s painting Drunkness of Noah (1515) and reinterprets it in the work al mondo non ocorre um altro supereroe (2023). Bellini’s work portrays a biblical episode in which Noah’s intoxication is recorded as proof of human weakness and imperfection. A role model, Noah is seen lying on the ground, stripped naked, completely unaware of his state. His sons stand around him, two of whom try to cover his bareness, and the third laughing at his father’s predicament. The meaning of the original painting is unravelled in Braida’s work. Noah is shown in the same position, but his body is camouflaged in nature, as are his sons. The son who previously laughed no longer does so, and those who tried to hide his nudity are not anymore. A broader acceptance of the human condition emerges, Noah’s glorification is deconstructed and Braida states that “the world does not need another superhero” (al mondo non ocorre um altro supereroe).

By presenting himself as an image-maker, Thomas Braida appears to navigate the darkness with the guile of a cat, an animal that sees, hears and treads through the night lightly. The cat as a night icon even appears in the painting rissa tra gatti con finale sorpresa (2023). It reveals a tension-filled moment between two cats facing each other in the darkness. The title of the work, “cat fight with a surprise ending”, suggests an action unknown to the viewer, which the artist had access to. This fight has a surprise ending that cannot be reached by our eyes, glimpsed only in our imagination.

By living in Venice, Braida is in permanent contact with the sea, and its influence can be seen in the maritime motifs that pop up throughout the exhibition, as in The real Barbenheimer (2023), or in the shimmers reminiscent of the rhythms and reflections of light on water, as in Things I found in the Ripples of Time (2023). In Garusoli (2023), Braida paints a bowl filled with sea snails (or whelks), a typical dish in Mediterranean coastal regions, combining the symbolic with the mundane. One cannot help but associate the sea with the most profound aspects of human consciousness. Tidal currents can recall the rhythms between the ocean’s deep waters and its surface, between the subconscious and the conscious, dreams and reality.

The patterns in wave sequences and their reverberation in the shell shape remind us of mathematics, a key element in Thomas Braida’s work. In our email exchange about Mathematiche Notturne, he told me that “bringing mathematics closer to painting felt to me to be a personal duty, since, unlike many, learning mathematics has helped me in life“. Braida’s varied references include Kurt Gödel, Alexander Grothendieck, Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. The latter’s significance arises from the Theory of Synchronicity, which Thomas draws an association with his artistic output. This means that there is a link between one painting and the next, even if they are separated by time. A symbolic spiral unfolds over time, bringing back themes and elements from his previous works, echoing the notion of synchronicity as a connection beyond temporal linearity.

Finally, Thomas Braida uses elements from his sketchbooks on the gallery walls to make up the different works we have seen: skulls and shells, cats and octopuses, birds and spirals. His sketchbooks are the source of primordial ideas that serve as the basis for his paintings. These drawings now travel from the notebooks to the paintings and from the paintings to the Monitor’s walls.

 

Mathematiche Notturne by Thomas Braida is on show at Monitor until February 3, 2024.

 

Laurinda Branquinho (Portimão, 1996) has a degree in Multimedia Art - Audiovisuals from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Universidade de Lisboa. She did an internship in the Lisbon Municipal Archive Video Library, where she collaborated with the project TRAÇA in the digitization of family videos in film format. She recently finished her postgraduate degree in Art Curatorship at NOVA/FCSH, where she was part of the collective of curators responsible for the exhibition “Na margem da paisagem vem o mundo” and began collaborating with the Umbigo magazine.

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