“Readable astonishments” : written word and visuality in the works of Waltercio Caldas

Abstract

The text addresses the artistic production of Waltercio Caldas (Rio de Janeiro, 1946) considering the encounter between written word and visuality. It reflects on the experience that this type of combination is capable of producing, both from the viewpoint of art and from the broader viewpoint of language in general. Three works by the artist will be analyzed: the visual essay Fiction in Things (2012), the set of works entitled Solid Sentences (2002) and the installations of the Veneza Series (1997). The analyzes are based on the experience of the works, in the conjunction between vision and reading they promote, on the artist's statements about his production that explores the union between writing and visuality, as well as on critical texts about his work and references from the history of art that contribute to understand his production from the viewpoint of the junction between written word and visual arts: Mallarmé, Marcel Duchamp, the Surrealist movement and the Brazilian concrete movements. Waltercio Caldas' experiments with the written word lead us to the understanding that art, through sensitive experience, enables the reflection on language and its limits, tensioning it in a way that would not be possible through concept.