“And that everything be solved in the air … in the thin air …”

Wild I am, I am!

Flying has always motivated the human being in his most secret dreams to create divinities and spiritual rituals that somehow connected them to the birds in the air. Motivated in part by his desire to dominate the heavens or to connect with the divine, man fed a myriad of legends that have survived since time immemorial, where passion, myth, and the possible have joined the ancestral fascination of seeing the world of top. This natural impetus to ‘fly beyond’ the real, the physical, led us to colonize all parts of the globe, took us to the heavens and then to space.

The Firebird is a multimedia exhibition inspired by a collection of experiences and information collected by me throughout my life. Plunging into ancient myths and archetypes, I have searched common fables in various cultures for a famous golden bird that is at the same time a blessing and a grief to those who possess it. In Russia, in Viking culture, Siberian shamanism, Greece, Egypt, Northeastern medievalism and even the Tupi culture, this bird is constant in legends and myths. Thus, I have appropriated all this legendary and mythological universe to create rich works that will connect to the vision of the men during the last ten thousand years on the birds, their influence in the daily life of the ancient civilizations, the dream of flying, the birds today threatened with extinction, the smuggling of animals and the relationship with present-day cities, paralleling even spatial colonization and exobiology.

At the heart of the roots:

My old grandfather said, “You only die when you’re forgotten.” This maxim always appears in my thoughts time and time again. And in order to not forget what I am, what I carry with me in the veins, and as a way to honor my ancestors who have left me so much, I have used my memories, histories and traditions inherited as part of the fuel for this exhibition. A true plunge into my past, to everything I read, my origins, to the blood of so many cultures and peoples that flow in my veins. I was born and raised in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte, in a very culturally rich home, where a grandfather introduced part of a culture of Eastern Europe (Czech and Finno-Russian) slightly modified by the years already lived in Brazil. On the other hand, an indigenous great-grandmother, a kind of shaman, of Potiguara origin, the mother of a grandmother who seems more like an eternal carnival queen. I am not white, I am not black, I am not Indian, I am a mestizo and I celebrate every particle of DNA inherited from each of these peoples.

My great-grandmother Nazareth, of Siberian indigenous origin, told a story about “the others”, “the people of the bush”, who were not people or animals. They were beings between spaces, between us and the other animals. Knowing this legend has always instigated me to imagine such creatures, a metamorphosed link that has always seemed the “great Brazilian foot,” or even some other kind of hominid that would have survived in the secular imagery of these peoples. My great-grandmother also said that in the distant past animals talked to humans, but that we began to feel better than animals and to do them very badly, so they stopped talking to us, only the “people of the bush” kept this ability of communication. This same great-grandmother healed people with magical portions and prayers, grew food and was a natural leader, a strong woman born in the distant year 1901. She taught me how to sculpt and model in clay.

These stories have always connected with impressive naturalness to Slavic gastronomic rituals, usually celebrated at the time of my grandfather John, with a series of traditions inherited from his mother Kalinka, who was born in the 19th century. Kalinka was also a strong woman, with deep blue eyes ahead of her time, sewing suits for men, which made her suffer great discrimination in the 1920s. She knew how to make vinegar, and her thick oats porridge (owsianka) are still alive at the tables of our family. I grew up in kraslices (traditional hand-painted Easter eggs), different vinegar-based foods, and National Geographic magazines that introduced me to the world in that poor, lonely place where I lived in northeastern Brazil. My grandfather, my greatest friend, a booster in art and example, a giant of unshakeable dignity, a former World War II fighter who had a coffee and who married my grandmother Bastinha (daughter of great-grandmother shaman), my eternal playful universes, always ready to set up some fantasy party or create reasons to celebrate, my biggest inspiration of joy and vitality. For her the real and the mythical are bound in the most benevolent embrace. And why not think she’s right? I follow and share this vision, being the most faithful vassal of your dreams and secret plans! Of all those mentioned above, she is the only one who remains alive and strong at the age of 83, along with my great-uncles: Margarida, Jorge and Purity. My secret tribe!

Other References:

In addition to this strong family inspiration, my intention was to find connections (through music, myths and visual art) between primitive peoples from various regions of the world, as if one could find traces of “civilization before civilization” when we were much more similar and shared common archetypes. Paralleling the science, music, tribal dances, space, classical music of the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, the oppressions of governments and the many and constant violations of individual freedoms around the world.

In Eastern Europe The Firebird is a metaphor, a delightful anarchy, about a brilliant bird that is at once a blessing and a misfortune, a glory and a regret for its abductor. A magical being from a very distant land guarding an orchard of sacred apples with magical properties. His feathers shine brightly even after withdrawals. He communicates with humans, guiding and advising them, but he can cast illusions on those he does not consider honorable. It is born in autumn and dies in the spring. Their appearance is usually of a kind of golden peacock, with its rejuvenating apples, which can in turn be compared to the fruits of pomegranate trees – the favorite delicacy of the Phoenix, a Greek archetype of the same myth.

My inspirations and research have not been relegated to the myths of the firebird, but have expanded into the whole universe of myths and legends involving birds around the world, from cave paintings of 10,000 years, to the archetype of manifested in different cultures around the globe, especially in Eurasia and New World.

For Brazilian natives there is the legend of Yorixiriamori, a god of the mythology Ianomâmi, present in the myth of the singing tree. A strange god who charmed women by their beautiful song, which aroused the envy of the men, who tried to assassinate him. Yorishiriamori then acquired the form of a bird of golden fire and fled. With him the singing tree is gone from the earth forever. There is also the legend of love between Guaraci (Temiminó tribe) and India Jaciara (tribe of Botocudos), who are separated and transformed into mountains, their only messenger is a bird of fire that once a year crosses the heavens approaching the lovers.

For the Vikings, the Huginn and Muninn crows are Odin’s eyes on the world, for the Egyptians Nekhbet is a vulture goddess attached to protection, for the North American, Celtic, African and Siberian Indians the birds are incarnate spirits, messengers of others worlds or even god-watchers. Our fascination may be justified because we always connect them to the divine, the magical and the unattainable, it is possible that this is motivated by our eternal frustration that we do not fly on our own.

As if myths and legends were not enough, we developed the first flying machines inspired by the birds and to this day the planes are a clear example. Now, over 100 years after the conquest of the heavens with the invention of the first plane, we will “fly” exploring the confines of the universe, scouring for traces of other beings like us and even colonizing new planets. The man gave his flying.

I have also noted that what is unusual among endangered animals, places of vast and untouched nature and ancestral peoples is that they are disappearing throughout the world. The freedom to exist, and to exist free, is for me one of the most immutable and unquestionable concepts, one can not be free and I understand that to be free is a good that must never be forgotten or underestimated, at the same time that freedom full evokes a series of responsibilities for a species that has the dominant status as ours.

So it is an exposition that involves many complex issues, themes that are complex to mankind and that we often run away for fear of where our thoughts would take us like: life off the ground, death, the wild side of man and our instincts. Themes that will surely instigate observers and visitors. I have used myself to the utmost of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the concept of total work of art, generally attributed to the German composer Wagner where the artist uses various supports. The term refers to the union of music, theater, singing, dance and visual art in a single work of art. Creating the “total work of art”. The use of multi-media in my work is a way of quieting my creative instinct that sees no difference between painting or sculpture, because in my ancestral past there is only the strong desire to subvert reality and create art.

The Firebird is so personal and wild it hurts! It’s a big part of what I am and I think. So … let everything be solved in the air, in the fine air …! And let the ritual begin!

Thiago Cóstackz

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Gravura de Ivan Bilibin, 1899

On a sleepless, moonless night, I woke up in a village, fog, wooden houses, cold and blue on all sides. The cold morning light brought my grandfather, who had quietly helped me wake me and invited me to meet an old weaver, he did not introduce me to me, but she looked like his mother. People stared at her curiously, their fingers were fast, they looked like a solemn lake in the middle of the mountains, there was a legend that their incomes were lucky and they said something about the future. We left the old woman, we are now facing a temple. My grandfather abandons me and releases my fingers as if I feel every particle of separation. Before me, dark, mysterious and slightly in decay, like most temples, I penetrated. Inside it, without people, diffused colors, benches of other ages, there was at the center a priest apparently blind, arms outstretched like a divinity that offered me two images: The first, to my right a cage covered with a purple velvet cloth, inside a majestic firebird, at the far end, on the left, a fighting scene presented me with two large, dead, dead birds with wings spread and limbs up. In one of them there was an egg, half off, half still inside the creature. And then I woke up …

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“Life and Death” – Acrylic on canvas 130cm x 80cm – Art Cóstackz

Fight, Life and Death.

For nights cries Craaa craaaa craaa
For days blows Craaa craa
For centuries unequal combat Craaa craaaa
For minutes indifference to opponent Craaa
Craaa escapes for a second.
Now we do not even remember why…

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“Shaman and Raven of the Storm” – Shaman the raven of the storm. / Performance.

Around the corner, in the lighthouse of the elephant dunes …

They say there was a circus, vinegar, Indians, spells, a golden tooth, a queen, 12 pineapples in one hand, and a Negro hunted to death. There were people from afar who crossed oceans, there were people on earth! As old as the darkest and strongest earth. His hands told stories, eyes had many colors and scars, no one was the same, some came from other ages, from other worlds, but I understood what they said as if the years did not matter and the souls could only enjoy the brief time that they would have together. From some I only knew the shadows, others the weight of the hand, the words that make bleed war myths, hunger for times, threats and the silence of the untold stories that were mixed with the loud noise of a place on the corner of the tropics . Hope came from paper windows, shadows of a world hitherto imagined. The houses were low, they grew with the years, and the trees diminished just like the children. Some have left, others are still there … I keep remembering them and following their words, some I follow to the soul! I am part of them and they are part of me. And even when I can not be among them I feel your kiss in the wind. And if one day love asks me to choose … poor and lonely will become.

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“Shaman and Raven of the Storm” – Shaman the raven of the storm. / Performance.

The Ancient People!

I am my ancestors and they are me.
I am in them and they are always with me, because they live within me.
I am the ancient people and the ancient people are me.
I have lived in them and they live within me today.

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“Shaman and Raven of the Storm” – Shaman the raven of the storm. / Performance.

Let the ritual begin …!

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Head…

In my dreams….
I wake up with a bird’s head in my hands, it makes me exhausted, it burns my hands, but I can not let go. She comes out of my dream, while I try to return to the dream, maybe now we’ll be together … trapped between the spaces.

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“Black Bird” / Performance.

Black Bird

As mysterious as the poetry of the ages finding the afterlife, he came. No gods, no guardians, no demons. Free and lord of self, free and lord of the shadows themselves, free and lord of the days, hours and the cosmic dust that I keep in me.

Free as death, thought and memory. Free as the solitary awakened awakening. When you are born dark and wild the night is the quietest dwelling.

As mysterious as the poetry of the ages finding the afterlife, he came. On nights when the moon leaves the sky, its brightness is perceptible, but discreet in the darkness. He looks more like part of her and when she defies the light he catches her in his skin.

Many judge whether they have a soul, some service, some talent. Steals from death, deceives light, kills darkness and sometimes cries craaa

I see the black, dark. My skin is clothes!

Fingers between wings, spell of the times, I see why I am what has happened in the centuries.

I am a survivor, I came from the land of fire, but also from the green sea and the imaginary icy mountains. They told me no, they kicked my face and cut my wings. But even if the air spirits had closed the way, I would have followed. Salvation was not there, gods were not there. A cry of salvation in the land of fire! I am the energy of fire and the hardness of water. I have energy, I am alive.

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“Huginn and Muninn – Memory and Thought / Performance. Art Cóstackz.

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“Black Dancing” / Performance by Costackz.

The Fire Ghost!

He dances on air, Loose in the air, slave to the air …
Wild as nothingness and indomitable as the deep forces of Earth.
It has no name, but it burns like the core of the strongest.
It defies the ice, but fears it and shares the ancestral fear of the rocks that were once fire.
He is clear as the morning, dominates creation, transforms and reborn and then dies, just as we would die for lack of air. Becoming a gray spectrum of itself.

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“Venus Boy” / Performance. Art Cóstackz

Venus Boy

Red horizon, I burn. I am a ruthless red bird, a storm of flames that flutters apart, doomed to dance for eternity. An orange spirit of the warm air of the land of fire, of the floor without floor, of the illusory surface. I keep love in the name, the hell on my horizon. My solitary grave are my flames, which make me reborn with the cupid kiss, the deadly sweet gas of Venus.

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The Saga of Wing

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“The Specter of the Wing”, intervention with sculpture of mirror and glass. Installed in the dunes deserts of Rio do Fogo / RN. “The Specter of the Wing”, intervention with sculpture of mirror and glass.

The Specter of the Wing!

Two specters, two old flames. A mountain, a crooked flight. One sparkling wing, one hidden. A desire for permanence, a desire for abandonment. A hidden wing, another one with razors. A soul in ember, a body in deep eagerness for touches. Mental marks of an eye in the future, dreams in the past. One wing in the sky, one eye in nothing. A dream in man, a will to abandon. One foot in space, one mind on Earth (on the ground).

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“Flying crooked” intervention with sculpture of mirror and glass. Installed in the sugarcane fields of Rio Grande do Norte / “Flying crooked” intervention with sculpture of mirror and glass.

Stunt

Entangled in doubts, heading towards the firmament, the wing hurts, the earth seems distant.
Without knowing where the wind takes him, he follows without space domination of his presence in the air.
He reflects fate and stops in the air defying gravity in the midst of nothingness, himself and local politics.
The deceleration brings deep mental confusion, disorients the real sense of flight, and begins to observe hypnotized a mysterious magnetism that takes him north.

Tentacles and Black Ceará

I always imagined flying over mountains, but I grew up in a valley. Low land where sweet and green pinnacles stand on both sides of the gray dirt road like charcoal debris, ruins of former times evoke prosperity and horror, the brown air finds a serene river that refreshes wings when finding the solitude of a field where only flowers the silence. The sky … ah, heaven, this one dominates as if it were the earth, the home.

Cracked graves, serpents and mysterious palm trees with dark trunks, as if every being of the land that lived there had found a home for his soul. They are staring at us at a certain distance from each other.

Black powder rain on terracotta roofs, facsimile speeches that connect to breached nests. Foolish planters of dreams survive the rape of the land and virgin wombs that have not yet been born. Monoculture keeping the monkey modus.

The paths always divide by the road while a black bird and a solitary moth help to break it with the silence of the winds on the emptiness.

On the hill that rises solemnly over the valley lives the sorcerer, solitary in his rock tower, this Shangri-la, surrounded by elementals, imaginary or not, I can say that they will be there.

And when I, now a highland being, go back to the valley, time seems to have suffered the effect of jellyfish sleep. Everything continues, even the relentless longing for this land and the astonishing sense of no longer belonging. Here is the valley where I stand next to a carcará and a hawk, in an unusual and cosmically orgasmic twilight.

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Take-off!

“Take-off”. Art by Cóstackz

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“The Arrival”. Acrílico sobre tela by Cóstackz

The arrival!

On an April night, like a bird of fire in the skies, they arrived. And our biggest fear is that they look like us. In a field, away from the great men, a form never seen terrifies just to be there. Fear our approach? Can you defend yourself from us?

Although many say yes, their arrival was not announced, at least not at all. Most of us thought we were alone. Human pride has always been sustained in their sacred books to put them as special in front of everything, even the universe.

We are afraid!
The big question is whether they would be hostile or benevolent. How did you cope with technological adolescence without self-destruction and here they came? Did they come to know about us? Was it premeditated? Were they watching us before we could know? Or was it all a surprise of an intergalactic cruise? Did they hear us, did they hear our signs? Our traces in space? Are they some of the many who will arrive? Are they unique? Are there others? Do they visit?

We have fear and fascination!

Misanthropes celebrate the arrival, clerics are hard to admit the obvious, governments, with gentleness and care, admit their inefficiency in front of visitors.

We have fear and doubt!

Did you experience evolution? Or were they created? Are we distant cousins? Do we have a common ancestor? Or do not they even have DNA? Is there a god? Concepts of Good and Evil? Do you help yourself when needed? Does your morale look like ours? Will they look upon us as superior to the other forms of life on Earth?

We know how something like this can end … we have done this before during our contact with societies that we consider inferior. What do they look like, what do they want? Did you come to free the others from us? The longest days of mankind are gone. The uncertainties have never been so diabolical.

But in one morning, still and silent they rise …

We did not see their forms, their biology was not revealed to us, they did not tell us to “lead us to their leader,” they did not fire guns, nor did they smile. They acted with one of the feelings that could most infuriate humans: indifference and silence. They were as silent as they came. If one day they will come back … we do not know. But … endless questions and endless possibilities lie in this arrival.

They can come back and our biggest fear is that they look like us.

“Invasion and Resumption”. Acrilic on canvas by Cóstackz.

“Invasion and Resumption”

They came out of the shadows of the earth, the air and the waters, they did not come from outside, they were here before us. But we deceive them, imprison them, test them, and devour them as if they were a macabre property. We never ask ourselves who owned the place, we never ask ourselves if they should be free or if they had a soul. One day, they decided not to talk to us anymore, a pact of silence so old that times made us forget their voices. When the others arrived, bursting through the sky like birds of fire, we were among them and the visitors, who came together to exterminate us as if we were the pus that contaminates the fungus and infects the mucosa. And then they returned to Earth. But … they did not drive us out and they did not kill us. They left us here, but the rules, our arrogant rules, these died. Everything was trespassing and resuming.

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Govern!

“Democratic Govern”. Performance by Cóstackz

Saga – In the Kingdom of Kashei

The Prison of Time …
Of the temple, Of the beast, Of the man,
From the male, From the free, from the loose,
Of the captured, of the trafficked,
Of the caged, of the dead.
The Prison of Time …
Stuck in time
From the prison of the temple.

“Saga – In the Enchanted Kingdom of Kashei” / Performance by Cóstackz

“Captivity” / Performance by Cóstackz

“Applause” / Performance.

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“Yorixiriamori – Ugly bird” / Performance.

Yorixiriamori!

Silence, a beak breaks the noise and breaks the egg.
A strange creature springs from it, unknown biology, crooked eyes, a different color, a strange down.
Undefined sex, its only wing is crooked, it does not open. Will he feel the wind kiss on his face?
I do not know if it is born free, but certainly already threatened.
Look at the tall towers and hidden between profit and boredom: an ugly bird is born.

Stop the rituals, I assure you that a bird was born!
Not in the sky, not on the ground, came to the world in a tree, roots cemented, arms limited by murderous blades.
Lonely and insecure, his voice is not pretty, but it’s still a voice.
Like it or not, I assure you that creatures like this have existed and others will always exist.
It breaks with standards, disgust, laws, dogmas, and hatred.
Nobody notices it, it’s ugly … But it really is a bird.

“Yorixiriamori – Ugly bird” / Performance.

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Sarcophagus of Tupi Bird!

Indigenous Demarcation! 

“Indigenous Demarcation” / Performance.

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Resistance and Birth!

Totens: “Resistance and Birth”. Sculptures made of porcelain and ceramics. Art by Cóstackz.

 Cóstackian Kraslice (Cóstackian Egg)

“Alien Egg” – Porcelain Sculpture. Art by Cóstackz.

Resting in Tupiland!

“Resting in Tupiland”. Porcelain Sculpture. Art by Cóstackz.

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White Bird Head

Sculpture Porcelain. Art by Cóstackz

Balck Bird Head

Porcelain Sculpture. Art by Cóstackz

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“Nike goddess, defeat the serpent of conservatism”. Performance by Cóstackz.

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“Ritual, Shadows and Fire”

Wild I am, I am
Ensorcelled I am, I am
The mountain calls me
The tempest dares me
I let the town of fire behind
My wings move and the wind kisses my face as a benevolent touch

I can hear my blood running in my veins
As if gods and demons were defying me
And with thunders
I could dissolve them in the air, the fine air

I’ve cast a spell and imprisioned my freedom in my soul, my soul.
Free and loose in the air
Defying forests and seas
A powerful force
A dynamo of disobedience

Shadows and fire
Shadows and fire
Shadows of my tempest of fire…

I am dying
And something is being born from my dark womb
In the center of the Galaxy
Like a benevolent vagina in a parallel universe

Shadows and fire
Shadows of my tempest of fire…

This is the final wild sacrifice, the final sacrifice…
The blow of a dream
That comes to an end
Tupi, Tupi, Tupi, Tupam…

“Wild I am, I am” Performance by Cóstackz.

Music Credits:

Lyrics – Thiago Cóstackz
Music – Hjörvar Hjörleifsson
Music Collaboration – Thiago Cóstackz
Sound mixing and mastering – Haffi Tempo
Music production – Hrafn Thoroddsen and Hjörvar Hjörleifsson

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“In the future, I tell you, somebody will remember us…”
Sappho – Lesbos, Greece VI – a.C

The End

Preface and text of curation:

The Wild Way –  by Anttonio Amoedo.

At first it was a dream. And as the researches of Carl Jung and the texts of Joseph Campbell indicate, our imagination, our deep curiosities, and the mother of our dreams are the mixture of myths so ancient, often unknown, that when we are placed before the Cyclopes, the crows of Odin and the cosmogonies that we do not even know are placed before the mirror. Sometimes what we see causes us charm, sometimes fear. Then do as Magenta, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and cry, “Oh, fancy, set me free” if you dare.

This is The Bird of Fire by Thiago Cóstackz, one of the most imaginative, restless, engaging and provocative contemporary artists of the moment. Chameleon like David Bowie and ironic as ABBA, B-52’s and Rita Lee. Here he recreates and expands the magic variables of the myth of the fire bird and exposes it, pulsing and alive before your eyes, inviting you to board the neon of your wings . Its infinite possibilities inhabit the walls of this multimedia exhibition, from the mythological ones (be embedded in the Siberian shamanism – source of the Native American cultures, present here also – be it in the gods and immemorial symbols), through the amazing ballet of Igor Stravinsky, to living spaceships that would make Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan vibrate in unison. And what does the Bird of Fire here ask of you? That plug your most intimate and individual truth into some of your golden feathers.

Thiago Cóstackz, with each new project, impresses by the number of supports that are used. This is no different here. The Bird of Fire is his closest work to the idea of ​​”total work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk) in writing lyrics he creates for the duo he and the Icelandic musician Hjörvar Hjörleifsson, with whom he composed the songs – and create clip to complete the multimedia exposure. Cóstackz’s paintings and body arts construct psychedelic, surreal, critical, and vibrant narratives. His sculptures continue the technique of Lucca and Andrea Della Robbia by subverting it by approaching it with old tribal totems, elements of nature, symbols incorporated into mass culture and new exotic figures close to science fiction. The songs summon the action and create images, challenge those who read their lyrics and allow themselves to be seduced by their sound. The scripted clips, directed and interpreted by Thiago Cóstackz, unite their experience as a plastic artist and environmentalist to the immemorial mythological universe that they learned from their ancestors and that they learned from their ancestors from their Amerindian, Eurasian and African origins. The book, in short, joins poetry rich in images to photos whose sequence creates a narrative cohesion. The Firebird is your most personal exposure. The artist is full here.

For being a multimedia artist and conceptual, Cóstackz does not get stuck to a single support. It is the concepts and philosophies that make you choose the structure. An example is his body arts, in which he uses his own body as a raw material, as an accessory to Art, and not as something to hide. The body in Cóstackz’s body arts is an instrument to break the conservatism of form, content and mainly customs. The exhibition The Bird of Fire is multifaceted as the bird in the body art Black Dancing. Each one of its supports is realized using the technologies of more recent and ecologically conscious materials associated with re-readings of artistic techniques, like Renaissance aesthetics, and its conceptual construction is immersed in Humanism. The result is a work attentive to the big themes, sarcastic, dense and deep, now in the service of the macabre, now beauty. It is not by chance that Thiago Cóstackz always mentions the one whom Plato calls the tenth muse, Sappho of Lesbos, and one of his most celebrated phrases: “I serve beauty and know nothing greater.”

Each character, plant, UFO, egg, the building of each of its cities passes some message and plays an aesthetic and narrative role in which the Beautiful is redefined and rediscovered in defiance of those who oppose life, the new, the elevation of evolution . Cóstáckz reaffirms with his work the fact that pop art involves constant reflection. All the birds of fire, from the flying saucers to the mythological birds, leave together their starry hiding places, now accomplices, now enemies, all fused in a great flight from the egg.

Another feature of pop art is that, no matter what language or media, it does not bow to sacred cows, nor does it force itself to renounce them. She drinks from her teats and transubstantiates her milk into something unexpected. Cóstackz plays with the divine reconstructing icons of the past, does not yield to the traditional imagery symbols, nor lends itself to any compromise with banal. He elaborates an exclusive whole that starts from his personal mythology and his references. In addition to the ancestral stories he has heard, his art is influenced by his research in the field of sciences, especially astrophysics and exobiology. As an artist she is also engaged in constant and thorough research of materials, from shops in Covent Garden, London, to Brás (central region of Sao Paulo) garbage dumps.

Through his work, and in this particular exposition, he gives the sacrificial vessels a high-speed connection with the signs of immediate communication without stumbling in the obvious. Bebe in the confrontation of rock, in the humanistic questions, in the criticality of the literature of authors like Franz Kafka, in the calculated confusion of Bosch and Bruegel, celebrates the gold of Gustave Klimt. It transforms old myths and icons, added to new perceptions, in a pictorial card that attracts the curiosity of the stories told around the bonfires – origin of all that we dream.

Thiago Cóstackz unites painting, collage and visual narrative techniques in his paintings and body arts, revises the tonal perspective, challenges logic as much as possible and constructs images with mathematical precision to the point that many of his paintings can be divided in half, thus having two complete, harmonic, similar, if not equal, pieces. Costackz puts himself all the time in the quest for mathematical symmetry almost obsessively. This is the result of years of study, experimentation and the pioneering spirit that makes us all advance. Each line, each repetition of layer is studied in favor of the aesthetic allied to the concept, without unnecessary didatismos or hermetic academicisms.

Your cities are part of the environment and not part of it. The events inserted in them add awe and charm. Tent space, whether in pictures, photos or clips, deepens all the sovereign mystery of native nature that inspires shamanic truths, unifying mothers of all peoples of the earth, and carry those who allow themselves to be in contact with this environment. Cóstackz glorifies the unexpected with success and fills him with content.

Just as Roy Lichtenstein gave, with the quality of his work associated with the possibilities of pop culture of his time, to the aesthetics of comics the force worthy of the art exhibitions, Thiago Cóstackz takes a new step in the graphic universe next to names like of Moebius and adds the perspective of the plastic arts to the great causes, pop and ancestral archetypes that reverberate today. Each piece of yours is like one of the profane cows sung by Gal Costa putting his horns out and above the herd. Something of himself, as the song says, is very respectful of his tears and even more his laughter. It is vivid pulsing art before your eyes.

Since we have recorded the visual arts and narratives, it is perceived that the broader the artist’s worldview and its ability to unite elements that make it up, the more surprising is the result (at the time of its creation and for generations to come). From the rock paintings to the Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, amplitude and fusion, together, yield the best creative results. There are at least two examples of this in this multimedia exhibition.

First, the look at diverse cultures, starting with the natives. By transforming the Indian universe into totems and porcelain sculptures, he found a path of sophistication for the survival of cultures that come before the eyes. The indigenous culture here is not approached in a secluded way, but united to the whole. The indigenista universe has an archetypal richness and a glamor still little used in Brazil. The exhibition The Bird of Fire helps to bridge this gap and shows its links to other universes, such as the Nordic and primitive peoples of Siberia. It achieves this by the sensitivity of realizing that we are in the myths and the myths are in each of us. Brazil is one of the rare places that can unite many archetypal realities in a single individual. This can be seen here. Rarely, however, are indigenous mythologies contemplated in Brazilian books and exhibitions. This absence does not occur in The Firebird, quite the opposite.

At first it was a dream. A dream with two birds killed in battle that gave birth to a creative universe as new and advanced as an ancestor that, despite the immensity of references, never goes backwards, always ahead, that does not conform to established reality or comfort personal successes of the past. It uses one of the most precious existential foundations of art: to provoke, to instigate.

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Credits:

Concepção Artística: Thiago Cóstackz
Projeto Gráfico: Patricia Buglian | Irmãs de Criação
Revisor de Texto: Anttônio Amoedo
Fotos de Body Art e Performances: Lienio Medeiros e Fujocka Creative Images
Colaboração Especial: José Fujocka, Renata de Paula e Anderson Torres
Fotos do Espaço da Mostra e da Intervenção “A Saga da Asa”: Thiago Cóstackz
Fotos de Esculturas, Natureza Salvia Alma e Making of: Patrícia Alves
Produção: Ana Gabriela Cóstackz e Felipe Cavalheiro
Vídeo: Fernando Vitolo / Younik
Hair: Kazuo hair design & beauty
Colaborador Estético e Corporal: Espaçolaser
Apoio Gastronômico: Gita Make My Cake
Consultoria Jurídica: Barbara Moreira

*Todas as imagens deste livro são de propriedade intelectual de: Thiago Cóstackz

Agradecimentos de Thiago Cóstackz:

Calvin Klein e equipe, Dudalina e equipe, Maison Alexandrine e equipe, Dinho Batista,
Alexandra Fructuoso, Livraria Cultura e equipe, Letícia Prudência Copiano, Zenaide Denardi,
Robson Silva, Haruan Instalações e equipe, Espaçolaser e equipe, Gita Make my Cake
e equipe, Gita Szmulewicz Szmulewicz, Syl Arte e equipe, Sylvana Cetinic, Salvia Alma
Retiros e equipe, Daniela Cecato Barbyeri, Edson Moreira e Van, Kazuo hair e equipe,
Nicolas Dantas, Helena Sebastiana, Pedro Paulo, Paula Maria, Fabiana Nogueira,
Junior Varela, Ana Gabriela Cóstackz, Lucas Manhani, Fabiana Caso, Renata Barcelos,
Renata Schulz, Rubens Torati, Felipe Menezes, Jaíne dos Santos, Bárbara Moreira,
Washington Pereira, Rosana Santos, Eliude, Lindalva Campelo de Macedo, Maria Gorete
Lima de Melo, José Nunes, Mario Nicoli, André Lazzari, Patrícia Alves, Felipe Cavalheiro,
Bjarni Thor Juliusson, Lienio Medeiros, Fernando Vitolo, Fujocka Creative Images, José Fujocka,
Danilo Antunes, Renata de Paula, Anderson Torres, Sueli Costa Varela, Solange Costa,
Juscelino Brasílio Gonzalis, Hjörvar Hjörleifsson, Sebastiana Costa, Irmãs de Criação,
Luciana Molisani, Rosana Molisani, Patricia Buglian, Karina Silva, Sandra Costa, Mary Costa,
Ivor Carvalho, Gabrielle Zake, Delta Serigrafia e equipe, Pinduca da Delta Serigrafia,
Imput Bureal e equipe, Reinaldo Salvioni, Sônia Maria, Sueide Maria, Anttônio Amoedo,
Marilia C Medeiros, Manoel Ubiratan, Pureza Pinheiro, Margarida Pinheiro, Jorge Pinheiro,
Rebeca Luiza da Costa Guimarães e João Neto. Aos meus ancestrais já solvidos no ar e para
sempre ao meu lado: meu avô João e minhas bisavós Kalinka e Nazaré.
Um agradecimento especial a Mario Nicoli sem o qual este projeto seria incrivelmente menor.