Author Archives: Caio Fern

Johnny Cash – Hurt

I know everybody is exhausted to listen this music or see this video. But for months I have listened this almost everyday and these last days … I’ve listened all the time. A classic masterpiece is a classic masterpiece.

ah, before I forget… after it get posted here this is going to be automatically posted on tumblr and the tumblers are going to see this post and say : “this is sooo 2004 or 2005″ or some hipster crappy like that. Today I will not play with you tumblers, not in the mood for artsy crappy cool stuff.  I am not in the mood, leave me alone, go to like posts of kittens, fashion and shinny pieces of trendy art.

 

Art won’t save you.

by Caio Fern
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Isn’t incredible the fact today we have all over the world hundreds of thousands of people thinking about design, creation and aesthetical in general?
What are they proposing?
What moves then to do it?
I believe today we are living the greatest technical moment of the story so far. Never in the entire world had in only one moment so many great technical professionals in all areas. So many musicians with such high level of ability, so many good writers that are fantastic about “how” to tell you a story, so many great painters, so many great photographers, so many creative architects, so many innovative designers in all areas.
The world became very technical about all areas of human knowledge. I see 14 years old kids today playing guitars or painting better than the great composers of few decades ago. When we think about technology we only imagine digital goods…. but no, all hand made work is technological too, and all areas of art are included in this concept. What a great time of techniques we are living now !
But……… oh Caio, you annoying bastard, here comes the “but”:
I wonder why with so many people all over the world working hard and submitting their entire lives as slaves to develop new aesthetical values, new ideas, new solutions, and with so many great technical in all areas…. why among all the hundreds of pieces of works I discover everyday nothing is able to touch me deeply, to tease me,  to amaze me, to push my boundaries.. or just to become relevant in my life ?
So many great professionals, so many great tools, so many brilliant minds, so many access to everything, so many effort to produce something cool, interesting and impressive… and I don’t think anything really great.
Is it me or there is something wrong with the whole civilization now? Oh Caio, I am pretty sure it is just you.
So let’s go to the theory I develop between green tea and poo.
The problem is the fact today has this belief that art will save your life, and your soul. All the trust is put on art and design in general. Art will offer life quality, art is the truth, art is sincere, art makes the world better, art is essential to human being in all its forms and moments.
And this is it, art by the art.
I remember when I started to have interest by art and used to go to all art exhibition happening at the moment, one of the things that annoyed me most was the fact all artwork only existed to illustrate a statement and the statement was only an excuse to a cheap crappy art work. Nothing could more more sterile and boring. I was wrong. Today is worst. Art is only an excuse to art itself , aesthetical is only an excuse for aesthetical itself and all turns around  references that lead to nothing. Two decades ago at least had the concern to pretend that the crappy piece of work was supposed to mean something, now it isn’t even necessary. Art is an excuse of itself and done, live with it.
Sure, what else could I expect? If art is the answer to all the problems faced in life, so art doesn’t need to mean anything, only needs to exist, be present and make it noticed as much as possible.
Other characteristic is the fact art and pure design all of sudden have no difference anymore, they serve for the same purpose, it is, they are aesthetical solutions for the human conditions, and not any kind of human expression. All is design, nothing is art. Art as it has existed is dead… or at least it is the real proposal of the minds creating and present at the self proclaimed art market.
This is what I believe is the huge difference between this beginning of 21st century and 18th 19th and 20th centuries.
Since 18th century God was discard by civilization and substituted for the logic. The logic was supposed to save the humanity and bring the solution to all problems. Logic came as philosophy, politic and science, these 3 heads proposing over and over again all that was necessary of public happiness and safety. We know it all was only able to lead to illogical results and new kinds of problems, the civilization at the end of 20th century got a huge disillusion about all this and had to turn its head towards to something that could bring any satisfaction: beauty.
Beauty about everything, body, urbanism, architecture, clothes, furniture, and this current plastic concept now named new contemporary art, taught at colleges all over the world as the new dogma to be followed.
Well, aesthetical as the solution for life became the greatest dogma of the History, even bigger than religion was in the past… as now this aesthetical doesn’t share its power with anything else,  even religious dogmas of the past used  and adopted other areas of human nature and human knowledge to improve itself . But why would a such convincing concept as the new aesthetical share its power, you don’t even need to believe on this, it is right in front of you, pleasing you, convincing you that you are living better because of its beauty.
So all the time you say you love art ( or any kind of design ) more than anything else and it is the most important thing in your life, you are as a matter of fact behaving as a volunteer slave worshiping a god of ancient times.
What is very funny because it is supposed to convince people they are very sophisticated but it makes then even more primitive that the human being used to be few centuries ago.
 Again, with so many production and quality ideas all over the world why can’t I like this? At the end, it has been produced good and interesting things.
The problem is the fact it has believed that aesthetical values are the solution , the so valued and desired “new” will come exclusively by the aesthetical manipulation. Art generates art by itself and isn’t necessary to have anything behind.
So we have now great musicians that are empty composers and only compose the obvious, we have great story tellers that have no story to tell, we have great painters , photographers, printers, and all the medias that have nothing to show. Sure, it makes sense, if you believe all the solution of your life depends of the taste of the food you eat, the design of the cloth you wear, the beauty of the furniture you sit, the sophistication of the building you frequent, the level of entertainment of the movies you watch…. why when you are going to produce something by your own you would be concern to express any human quality…. all your personal qualities were substituted by design and design has being only a way to express technical quality, so all you will express is design by itself, technique by itself…. what makes all of us one step beyond the 18th-20th century mentality that says  logic is the solution for everything. The difference is that before only God was discarded and placed by human logic, nature and capacity … but now even human values were discarded. Aesthetical by itself is believed to be the Saviour of civilization because at the end it excludes all the human values.
So when you say that you believe in art to improve your life quality, you are as a matter of fact saying that you accept the new world system, that you accept the fact art is dead and the new art is only an aesthetical excuse for itself and the fact that the only solution for human being is its own extinction by its own technical knowledge.
What is funny, because art lovers are self clamed very sophisticated and smart people. You are all digging your own grave. Art lovers are today the most manipulated kind of people of the world. There is no freedom in the art world even because there is no art world, only a market with hundreds of arms and links that sells convenient aesthetical excuses wearing irreverent and subversive costumes. It is as cheap and crappy and conformist as Brazil’s carnaval, where people celebrate what they think it is freedom but is only imposition of values.
Some people just want to see the world burning . I do.  I DO I DO I DO !!!!!!!
Come Armageddon, come apocalypse, come come come.
hahaha, so… go to celebrate your “artistic appreciation in this world, your very smart opinions about everything, go to be clever and smart without being intelligent. You are sophisticated, do what you want, buy this aesthetical lifestyle and start to hate me now. ”

extensions of gestures.

Image
 
among the shortest extensions of my gestures 
you hide your breath from me.  
… did someone stop to trust me here? how could it be any of us fault? 
 
i don’t care from where your mute voice comes now. 
i hate distances as much as i ignore here and now.  
…and what else has our lives been if not conforming and settling for about where we are and not where we want to be? 
 
even by the longest extensions of my gestures 
nothing practical has been built. 
isn’t a painful miracle that life has kept from us all the love apart?  
 
… 
…… so i have used the brightest color to refer to your most private and noble nature.  
and it is important to remember i didn’t get blind by the situation. 
 
any one of us are that brilliant about numbers and math but we must to make clear how many excuses must to be invented in order to create an escape.  
no excuses for us.
there is nothing to flee and this is what is making me really sad.  
there is nothing to avoid and there is nothing to do.  
there is nothing to fix , there is nothing broken.  
this is all just not viable.  
 
all the strength of my gestures will never change it.  
this is all just not viable.
this is all just sad.

Caio Fern, acrylic on canvas 2012

there is a pumpernickel waiting for me.

by Caio Fern.
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It is a way to pretend to the world this is walking while I am marching in my head…. but God knows I am only trudging,
trying to make my desires take place in a life forgotten even by the enemy.

And what do I have to offer besides my unnoticed presence ?
It is a way to pretend to the world this is walking…. but who cares?

Didn’t have a fitness store here at this corner? I thought that could buy heavy weights and make my arms so strong that wouldn’t look like mine anymore.
Could it build anything?

So there is this story I feel like to tell you but I don’t know how to start.

I won’t start, you will call me a liar.
All the time I say the truth people think I lie. All the time I lie, people believes.
Even I don’t know what is real now.
Should I believe on my lies to make it real or should I keep the truth to live a lie? I can’t distinguish my acts and intentions, can you ?

I am walking the dogs and it is a cold morning, people didn’t wake up yet.
I try to stop for looking to a purple flower among pine trees but the dogs drag me till the place they love to poo.
I love drizzle, I love heavy clothes with lots of pockets and love my dark green umbrella with details in golden cheap metal and wood.
Silent breaths seconds before dawn.
I love to tell myself I am getting older and there is a cup of green tea waiting for me at the kitchen with pumpernickel brot when arrive from this walk.
I love drizzle and cold and love the fact people love to complain about a such adorable thing.

I am only going to work till noon, in the afternoon I will workout till physical exhaustion , take a warm shower with that shampoo that smells so good, wear my favorite and most comfortable pair of old shoes, take my umbrella and go to church in the freezing evening to pray alone among families and couples.
Time is an illusion and makes more fuzzy. He said : ” Before Abraham was, I am”.
…eternal now, my Lord.
I love to pretend I am decent.
I love to have my crimes erased.
…make me believe I still worth some love as everybody else before I come back home and sleep the sleep of the forgotten.
I need a miracle. You are there. Now.
I am still right here.

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www.silentspots.blogspot.com

www.meinwelt-22.blogspot.com

www.caiowelt.blogspot.com

 

 

Going to work. Tight black tie on the clean shirt. Wearing the brow jacket that makes me look more respectable. I tried to comb my hair but the breeze throws it on my face. It is getting cold now with … Continue reading

All started with angels. Angel Fish, Acara Bandeira.

The first photo below is a small detail of the main tank on the moment the two couples met for an afternoon chat. These photos were taken in dark with my old a beloved Cannon camera, the film was developed and then I took digital photos of the photos… that is the reason of these faded colors. . When I first got one couple ( 2004 ), it was a gift and I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t return to the store and couldn’t just leave in a corner of the house. They were suffering in that small aquarium and I didn’t even slept at night thinking about the horrible life conditions those little beings were having. So I started to study and try to develop a perfect environment to then. I didn’t have money to buy larger aquarium, better filter and only solve the problem with better products. All had to be done with creativity and knowledge of their natural environment. With the passing of time I got largest aquariums , more fishes, and was able to develop better and more organic environment to then. I got fascinated with the idea to create an ideal world indoors. Well… all my life was a mess, I didn’t have money to eat, I didn’t have family or friends and was living in a violent city, ugly, and with this heavy, sterile concrete architecture called modernist or contemporary, no nature, no sign of the rain forest ( Mata Atlantica ) that once existed here. I hated every single aspect of my life and the world around me. Suddenly aquarium looked like a escape from all this. Was like a drug but with no collateral effects. It was exactly at the same time Mein Welt was created. The idea of breeding a rain forest indoors have exited me since then. Now I am working on a project of a Paludarium. I have worked on it for a couple of years developing new organic ways to filter the water and air, to heat it in as natural as possible way. to light it in a simple form not depending directly the sun, organic and self recycle soils…. I have no idea of how to put this in practice… or I don’t even know if I had a chance I would really do it. Maybe not. But dreaming and sketching and calculating crazy numbers has been my free time hobby these time I didn’t paint. Yesterday I felt a tiny, almost microscopic will to go back to the studio and keep developing what I was doing. But it is good to stop for a while, to see your own production from a bigger distance, to recognize what is really important on what you are doing and what must to be discarted. I like distances…. I like aquariums…. I like to live at the most distant and hidden corner of the world and do not even belong to this…. it makes me get closer to God and myself. . Angel Fishes , or Acara Bandeira as we call it here, are very moody, they all could be artists. Every individuals is very different of the other, physically and personality. With the passing of time I avoided the most aggressive and only focused on the very pacific, healthy and pretty ones for living in my pacific little worlds not causing trouble for their companions. Now I don’t care for reproducing then anymore. Because of many changes in my life on the past I had to avoid reproduction, but I kept all then in couples for not getting alone and living in very good aquariums. Is it sad to keep animals in tanks ? Yes, it is horrible. But I learned two things: these fishes wouldn’t exist in nature and if they return to there they wouldn’t be able to survive, the wild angel fish, as the one you see on the last images, is much stronger and more resistant. Other thing is that in Nature a fish only swim from one place to other if he needs to find food or escape from a predator, fishes don’t wim or exercise for fun. In well developed aquariums with lots of space to exercise they have more food than they find in nature and there are any kind of predators or stress. In aquarium a fish can live between 2 and 5 years more than would live in nature. So I do believe that if you create a proper environment for fishes bred ( never taken in wild ) you will be doing a good thing.

Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, albino koy veu, macho.

Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, Palhaço Albino Koy Veu. Macho.

Acara Bandeira,pterophyllum scalare, Albino Koy Veu , femea .

Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, Selvagem, macho This is the very first fish in my life, he and the wife which one I never can take a pic. I didn’t know they were wild. After this I decided to never acquire fishes taken from the nature as is very common to see in stores.

 

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Ahhh !!!  ………….few weeks ago I posted about my ultra natural amazonic aquarium and received may nice feed backs from you. Thank you. Just let me make you know that post on Tumblr and WordPress was as a matter of fact posted in 2009 or 2010 on Blogspot.
Today The aquariums with Tetra Green Neon fishes are much better, the water is excellent , you can even put a sick fish in it and in less than one week it will be all healed. Magic of the nature ;)
The fishes are not just very well but they are reproducing all the time, the vegetation is very dense but every 15 days I see a brand new baby coming out of it all shy… they don’t stop to born, what proves that the environment is perfect as this species doesn’t reproduce so easily in captivity, are few reports of it happen all over the world. And I don’t do nothing to make it happen, they do it spontaneously.

Caio Fern on Eduardo P.L’s blog

Eduardo P.L posted about my work on his blog. Obrigado Eduardo. It is a bog about conytemporary art in general. Check it on :http://cimitan.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/caio-fern.html

abstract painters: what can they do to develop better and deeper works than I have done with my aquariums ? :D

Breeding a pocket Amazon Jungle. Aquarium and eco-system

 

Breeding a pocket Amazon Jungle. Aquarium and eco-system

 
Long story short : I was always against the idea of having animals living in cages , aquariums and things like that ( remember I’ve been vegan and vegetarian for more than 15 years ). Then A stupid girlfriend I had many years ago gave as gift a small aquarium with many angel fishes inside . The angel fishes started to grow up, get sick , few died , and i had to buy a larger aquarium . They started to reproduce and I used to sell the “babys” to aquarium stores .
I was very concerned with their health and as fast as possible started to study about the better conditions to keep animals in a aquarium . First I used to read book of aquarium , Julian Sprung ( I think he even worked for NASA ) and Alf Jacob became my heroes . Then I started to study the Black River in Amazon jungle and try to recreate all the aesthetical and chemistry conditions of the place inside the little cubs of glass . I got fascinated with the studies NASA developed to create life on the Moon using closed environments . I wanted to develop an aquarium that was am perfect closed Eco-system. Well…. on the entire planet Earth has any “entire closed eco-system” , it is all connected with another areas of the planet . But i got close .
After thousands of consecutive tests , this month (11/25/2010 )  has been two years that I don’t change the water of my main aquarium . The fishes that live there (Pristela Gold and Neon Cardinal ) usually live 3 year in the nature  but with me they are going to make 5 years old !!!
The only source of new water of the aquarium is when I fulfill the water that have evaporated . it is one bucket every two months .
About the food . January on 2009 I bought a pot of Tetra Min , 12g , and it is still on the half :D The fishes are health . I tried to introduce colonies of tiny insects and worms to see if the could reproduce there inside and be the natural fishes food . But the only thing that have worked so far was an accident . A little bit of chow fell on a corner near the lamp and i didn’t clean that . With the humidity weird tiny insects started to grow there . These insects ofen fall on the water feeding the fishes . Now i need a way to reproduce these insects in larger scale .
So the aquarium has only a filter , a hitter and 2 lamps . The filter is efficientbut i haven’t change the refills for two years so it only makes biological work . Most part of the clean water happens because the plants there inside make photosynthesis, what is toxin for the fishes is food for the plants and the plants are responsible for the oxygen too . by the way , i don’t take care of the plants. only the stronger have survived there and multiplicated .
About the lamps … is is still responsible for at least 40 % of the light and the rest is natural light . If you think these photo revel a too dark aquarium, remember that these specimens are from an area of the Amazon where the water is darker and they don’t like too much light , different of what people does with aquariums in general .
The heater is the only thing I consider extremely important as the fishes really need stability of temperature all the days of the year .
 I am going to start my new project . To develop a entire new planet under the earth !!!

www.silentspots.blogspot.com 
www.meinwelt-22.blogspot.com 
www.caiowelt.blogspot.com

Brazilian art Magazine Caixa Lote’s blog has a post with Caio Fern’s work.

Brazilian art Magazine Caixa Lote's blog has a post with Caio Fern's work.

Brazilian art Magazine Caixa Lote’s blog has a post with Caio Fern’s work.

The blog of the Brazilian art magazine Caixa Lote posted about Caio Fern.

Thank you all.
e muito obrigado.
beijos, abraços e tudo mais.

http://caixalote.com/blog_teste/?p=17