“Cone - series How many WINGS does a pixel have?”

Photographer Vicente de Mello reflects on issues specific to his field through diverse themes, such as natural and architectural landscapes, intimate and public objects, human bodies and even works of art. For him, the compositional experience seems to be the ultimate goal of his work. With interesting references from the history of art and photography itself, Vicente creates a new path, a new universe, with each new series. He graduated in Social Communication and specialized in History of Art and Architecture in Brazil. He has held exhibitions at renowned institutions around the world, such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro), Instituto Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (Recife), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, among others. In 2006, the book "Áspera Imagem" was published, and in 2014, "Parallaxis". His works are part of important public and private collections, such as those of the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (Rio de Janeiro), the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museums of Modern Art of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the Daros Foundation, the Fondation Cartier pour l´art contemporain, the José Roberto de Figueiredo Ferraz Collection, among others.

In his work, there is a constant game of visual reconstruction based on existing elements, mainly those of the architectural landscape: pillars, roofs, walls, steps, glazed surfaces forming large mirrors, among others, are reviewed by Vicente, creating, from them, new compositions.

In "Telluric Reds" (2001), architectural landscapes gain rounded edges and reddish tones that give them a new look and feel. In a square format, iconic places and buildings, such as Venice, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu and the Centre Pompidou, seem to have been displaced in time.

Vicente carries out several experiments relating light and forms, taking many of his images to abstraction, as we can see in "The Perfect City, The Rubber Tree" and in the series "Lapidus and Galáctica" (2000). In this series, Vicente treats luminous elements, such as lamps and their supports, as if they radiated light in different universes, transforming them into stars, asteroids and meteoroids.

In ""Imaginary Topography (1994-1997), the basis of his creations are human bodies, which take the foreground of the image and show in detail the skin, its porosity, its folds and the mark of time.

Furthermore, his work has a close relationship with works of art, a keen, curious and compositional look at them, due to his experience in documenting them. Among other projects, he was the photographer responsible for the images of Maria Martins' works, featured in the book "Maria".

Vicente has also expressed himself through words, naming his works, which can be words or even short verses. In "Cinematógrafo", for example, the triptychs, in vibrant colors, generally composed of two images of natural or urban landscapes and a third with human presence, are accompanied by intriguing phrases that open up their senses to the viewer and propose at the same time a sequential game of image and text.