Clay to Concrete
Miami Art Week
Casa Atelier, Miami

[…] it is hard to know  / where the river begins / where clay  / begins from the river / where the land / begins from clay / where the man /  where the skin / begins from clay / where begins the man / in that man.

João Cabral de Melo Neto, The Dog Without Feathers

The Brazilian semi-arid region is one of the most inhospitable places imaginable and yet it is home to nearly 30 million people. From the Pernambucan hinterland emerged brilliant minds responsible for some of the country’s most striking cultural expressions: João Cabral de Melo Neto, Luiz Gonzaga, Ariano Suassuna — even the Ukrainian-born Clarice Lispector was raised there. In this landscape, more precisely in Serra Talhada, with its cracked soil and scarce water, Ton Gomes was also born. He moved to São Paulo at a very young age, but the sertãoleft deep marks on him. Often, everything is born out of nothing: it was the absence of photographic records in his childhood that gave rise to Ton’s need to photograph.

Clay to Concrete follows Ton Gomes’s journey from the clay-rich soil of the semi-arid backlands to the concrete of New York City. Clay might be understood as a kind of precursor to concrete — what existed before the hardening inherent to metropolitan life. The mandacaru blooming in the dry, fissured earth, or a plant breaking through the asphalt, are not mere clichés; nature, in fact, prevails.

In the same way, Ton’s works reveal an immense sensitivity and an almost naïve gaze that recalls a pre-concrete period. In the photographic diptych centered on the clay that gives the exhibition its title, he incorporates elements traditionally associated with good luck — the figa charm and the lucky right foot — as if invoking ancestral protection.

The black-and-white photographs point to another creative process, one tied to his work in fashion photography; they reveal Ton’s appreciation for technique and aesthetic precision, qualities the photographer carries into the painter. In his oil paintings and clay sculptures, Ton positions himself as a silent observer, peering through cracks and recording with the rawness of one who is simply looking.

Clay and concrete overlap because both serve as structures, as foundations. In Ton’s works, it is impossible to tell where clay detaches from the landscape and where the city’s concrete begins to cover the body; where matter becomes skin, where skin returns to matter; where the man begins or where the clay-born boy still remains. From clay and concrete, everything blends, and each thing always begins inside the other.

Curatorial text by Luiza Testa