Regis Silva

Regis Silva
1977 - Brazil
Painter, sculptor.

The act of celebration lies at the heart of Brazilian artist Regis Silva's two- and three-dimensional work. By his hand we are led through a vivid and fragmented festival of abundance and famine, of love and prostitution, of life and death. Be it in his clean monochromes or his saturated multi-media pieces both the sublime and grotesque are always handled with equal reverence. Born in Paraiso, Brazil in 1977 Silva unknowingly embarked on his artistic career when, at the age of 16, he wandered into an art supply store and purchased a canvas and acrylic paints. Though he would continue his college studies and go on to work professionally in accounting, the seed had been planted. At the age of twenty-two he left Brazil for California where he began his artistic pursuits in earnest.

Inspired by the meandering northern coastline, its multitude of jellyfish and other sea creatures, Silva's seminal collection of oceanic abstractions came quickly. Colorful, mysterious and gravity defying, these studies display Silva's keen interest in his organic surroundings, but most importantly they introduce the complex dialectic characteristics of his future works. His bright pallet; his evocative cubist renderings of the face; and his obsession with the voluptuous, the sexual.

Silva's widely celebrated first solo exhibition at the Pacific Grove Arts Center, 2005, garnered feature-length pieces in both The Monterey Herald's Go! Magazine and the Monterey County Weekly . Other exhibitions have included group and solo shows at San Francisco's Blue Room Gallery, the Muckenthaler Cultural Center, the Pajaro Valley Art Center Gallery , and the Day of the Dead Celebration at the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz. However, it was the commission for the Hotel Des Arts suite in San Francisco that finally manifested the dexterous power of Silva's work. Having invited the artist, Bloum, to collaborate with him, Silva set out to rupture the static expectations of guest quarters by creating a space where one could relax and forget they were actually inside. No surface - save for the ceiling and floor - went untouched. No media unused. From mural to sculpture, fabric to acrylics, the suite exists as a joyous point of departure for the senses.

A five-time featured artist in BrasilBest magazine, the July 2007 cover piece, "Gossip", illustrates Silva's technical advancements. Where earlier attempts at the chaotic chatter of city streets fell short, this new canvas vibrates with the tightly orchestrated tonal exchange of multiple characters. But even more indicative of Silva's advancing artistic agility is his move to the three-dimensional, the sculptural. 2006 saw Silva leap from small-scale figurative sculptures to a crowning outdoor commission in Costa Rica, "Humanetee: The Tower of Life".