Lucas Simoes is an independent artist born in 1980, Brazil. Many of Lucas’ pieces of art are heavily layered and distorted as he cuts away multiple sections of each layer which result in a bizarre multi-dimensional image. Lucas’ deliberate disfiguration of portraits result in an aesthetically pleasing body of work names ‘Desretratos’ translating to ‘Un-portraits’
“In this series of works, I invited intimate friends over to tell me a secret as I took their portrait. However, my intention was not to hear their secret, but to capture the expressions of each one at the moment they revealed their secret. I also asked each one to choose a song for me to listen to in my earphones while I photographed them. And, after the photo session, I asked each one if the secret had a color, and these are the colors the portraits carry. From this photo shooting session, I chose 10 different portraits to cut and overlap.” – Lucas Simões [NOV 2013 INTERVIEW WITH REDEFINEMAG]
Lucas’ work experiments with a simple aesthetic, one of which passionately engages with his medium of photography in a way that doesn’t limit the narrative within a singular dimension. His work could be described s abstract portraiture, abstracting identity with geometric shapes. It isn’t the usual features of a portrait such as the gathering of wrinkles upon a forehead or the gentle slop of a brow that evoke a visceral response, but more so the unidentified subject as a fertile symbol. We as viewers relate to the work not as particulars – not as a specific individual – but as universals.
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