Furniture design and
art go hand in hand. A piece of furniture can be a work of art and a work of art, in turn, can also be a piece of furniture. But there is a characteristic that distances these two things: the first seeks practicality and functionality,
while the other can simply be... useless! In the book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", by
Milan Kundera , the philosophy of weight is a central theme of the novel and one of the conclusions that can be reached is that living life with "heaviness" can be negative, but that
the same thing happens with excessive lightness . There is a weight in the search for utility, and a premise that everything needs functionality. It is precisely a counterpoint to this that artist
Francisco Nuk proposes – or as he himself calls it "
the revolution of uselessness ".
Joiner and artist, Nuk presented an artistic project at
Galeria Lume that explores the fragility of the useful in relation to the useless at
SP-Arte 2022 . "Doing something that is useful doesn't make sense to me," explains the artist.
Who is Francisco Nuk?
Son of an artist father and a gallerist mother,
Francisco Nuk was born in 1990 in Belo Horizonte, and
has been in contact with the artistic world for as long as he can remember . The parents, Sérgio Martins Machado and Paulina Ribeiro De Oliveira, met at the Fine Arts school in Belo Horizonte, and in the same year that Nuk was born, the mother opened a contemporary art gallery – which ended up closing after a while. Today, it has a cultural events venue. The father continues as an artist. Despite the influences at home, both his parents and his school did not encourage young Francisco to pursue a career in Fine Arts. "They (the school) had certain fears. They wanted me to do engineering or something like that."
At school, his favorite subjects were history, art and physical education. He decided to major in Physical Education, as sports were also a passion. He graduated, but never worked in the field. During high school, he went to study in New Zealand, and spent
a year and seven months studying fine carpentry . When he graduated and returned in 2009, he wanted to continue exploring the techniques and materials he learned. "I absolutely fell in love with the job. It's a range of possibilities and different forms."
Along the way, while he was still studying Physical Education, he went to live in Argentina, in a carpenter's house, and felt that
carpentry somehow always followed him . After graduating, he lived for a period in Australia, where he first worked as a suit carpenter.
So much time working with what is considered
standard furniture has brought a restlessness to Nuk's artistic side. Upon returning to Brazil, he started helping his father at the gallery, but he wanted
to follow his own path and explore his own forms .
The revolution of uselessness
Tired of focusing his creations on usefulness, Nuk reflected on antagonism and came to the conclusion that
art can be useless . Although the phrase is, in a way, "heavy", the weight lies in the
negative connotation that the useless term has – unfairly, in the artist's view. [quote author="Francisco%20Nuk"]The useless thing, in the end, is about perspective. Everyone has their own.[/quote] He decided to take two objects that, according to him, are the closest to the human form: a
drawer and a
wardrobe . Just like furniture, we human beings also store things, and we are always looking for usefulness and
condemning procrastination . "I took that object and
kept bending it and thus taking away its usefulness . Ultimately, this drawer is shaped like furniture, but it doesn't open. When I bend it and place it upside down, it can Until you open it, it doesn't stop being a drawer, but now it's useless.
[quote author="Francisco%20Nuk"]When I question my usefulness, it's because I'm not satisfied with it. If I'm not satisfied with it, the opposite is uselessness. Somehow, we need to seek out the useless to find transformation and reach a more comfortable place.[/quote] It took a lot of reflection on uselessness and understanding that it doesn't have to be something negative. "If someone turns around and says 'you're useless', within our society,
it could be a compliment" . For the artist, uselessness is a way of
finding new paths and not following the usual ones , since the world is constantly changing. Your exhibition makes this call, that taking a break for leisure is also important and helps us guide new paths.
The inside of the drawers...
The artist used
surrealism to reach the useless, but he does not consider himself a "surrealist artist". He says that when he started bending the drawers and the wardrobe, he wasn't focused on the artistic movement,
but it came almost by accident . "When I started to question this usefulness, I saw myself as this closet. It's an
analogy of the human being who also puts everything in their 'drawers'." [april-see-also]W3siaWQiOjEyNTMzMywidGl0bGUiOiJVbml2ZXJzbyBkZSBUaW0gQnVydG9uIGNoZWdhIGEgUyYjeEUzO28gUGF1bG8gZSBwcm9tZXRlIG11aXRhIGludGVyYSYjeEU3OyYjeEUzO2 8if Sx7ImlkIjoxMjM1NjYsInRpdGxlIjoiSW5zdGFsYSYjeEU3OyYjeEUzO28gaW4mI3hFOTtka In0seyJpZCI6MTIzNDA1LCJ0aXRsZSI6IkV4cG9zaSYjeEU3OyYjeEUzO28gJiN4MjAxQztBIFRlbn MmI3hFM ztvJiN4MjAxRDsgdHJheiBwaXNjaW5hIHF1ZSBuJiN4RTM7byBtb2xoYSBLbSBTJiN4RTM7 byBQYXVsbyJ9XQ==[/abril-see-also]
