ALEXANDRE ABI-ACKEL
Alexandre Abi-Ackel is an artist from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He graduated in Social Communication with Qualification in Advertising in 2007 from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado in São Paulo. In 2009 he started his authorial career through photography with a very particular approach, which led him to deepening in different techniques such as drawing and painting. During his way, he collaborated with several professionals in São Paulo and Milan, Italy, where in 2013 he graduated in the Photography and Visual Arts course by the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
As a studio assistant in 2009, he produced his first authorial work: the photographic series "Spontaneous Expressions". The work consisted of aesthetically uniform portraits but which, through sensory stimuli, sought to surprise the portrayed and capture his expression more truthfully, evading the traditional portrait photography protocol.
His first authorial project, in addition to earning him an honorable mention at the International Photography Awards, revealed a strong interest in raising important questions about the artistic production process, a mark that the artist carries on until the current works.
In his next project, the artist intuitively explored the photography capture and the selection and editing processes. The series "Connections" was born through the collection of images of the artist's daily life that, as he accumulated them, formed connections between different places and times, giving a new meaning to the images that are left to the viewer's imagination.
During the long period of production of the series "Connections", new questions about the printing and registration processes started to become important for the artist. The next step was the "Interventions" series. Photographing the photograph itself, in some cases on several occasions, the artist gave a new continuation of meaning to the images intervening during each registration and printing process.
One of the interventions used was to paint over the photograph. This act, in addition to becoming symbolic for the artist, since he questioned the meaning of photography itself as a simple pigment on paper, brought to light his old interest in painting and drawing and caused a period of great experimentation that went through alternative methods of printing and painting techniques.
In his most recent project: "Beyond the Body", the artist recombines all the learning from previous research and projects. In this series of drawings are present his interest in the human figure, his characteristics of diagramming and the use of spaces in search of provoking the viewer's imagination.
