Allan Weber: Traficando arte: ArtRio 2022

Allan Weber’s solo exhibition at ArtRio will show a large set of works from the series Dealing art, in which the artist translates and transposes into objects, installations and photographs the situations, elements, images and narratives from the context in which he was born and lives: the community of 5 Bocas in the North region of Rio de Janeiro.

The reality of the communities of Rio de Janeiro is marked by the abyss of social inequality, the violence perpetrated by the police, and the fighting between drug-trafficking factions. All these aspects, though, should not be taken as defining characteristics of these places, but as constituting factors. Cultural, artistic, literary and musical production and the aesthetic manifestations of fashion are potencies which emerge from these places and also define it.

The main theme of Allan Weber’s production is precisely this complex, contradictory and in dispute – both material and symbolically – context in the communities of Rio de Janeiro. According to the artist, his works are photographs, objects and actions that aims to question and strain its relationship with elements of a social class that is marginalized and discriminated against for its culture and behavior.

Considering that, the title of the series, Dealing art, proposes a subversion of the negative idea of drug dealing to a positive proposition of art dealing, thought from the notion of exchange, business and dialogue. Or, as the artists says: “My work speaks about Rio's geopolitics and I produce it seeking to subjectively deconstruct objects and codes used by the drug dealing for the creation of new concepts.”

Thus, several elements related to this daily life surrounded by the drug trade, as weapons and packages for drugs, are transformed and reframed by Weber, both in the photographic series Dealing art and in the series of weapons built with second hand cameras, or in the series entitled Endola, in which the technic and material  used to pack loads of weed become geometric and conceptual objects.

Elements from the visual and musical culture of Rio’s favelas are also articulated by Weber in his works, such as the aesthetics of haircuts, the so-called “cortes na régua” [haircut on the ruler] or “cabelinho na régua” [hair on the ruler], which are present in a symbolic way in the series Ruler, where the blades used for these cuts are organized in a geometric way and pasted on canvas, creating compositions that dialogue directly with the constructive tradition of Brazilian art. This dialogue is also explored by Weber in a series of works made with patchwork collages of tarps used in the roof structures of the bailes funk [funk balls] usually colored and geometrized.

Sketches of the project Ball day will also be presented. The project emerged from the artist's annoyance at always seeing the "bailes funk" being portrayed in a marginalized way, as a place of violence, ignoring all the knowledge produced there, as well as their social and cultural function in the communities where they are held. The first edition of the project took place at the exhibition Rebu, in 2021, at the swimming pool of Parque Lage, and took to the interior of a palace in eclectic style from the beginning of the 20th century a typical tarp of the favela balls along with a wall of sound that were activated at a party. Thus, an aesthetic and social friction was created with the elitist environment of the South region of Rio de Janeiro, at the same time that an attempt was made to present and invite the public to get to know this musical and cultural manifestation that is the funk ball.