A disciple asks his master how deep the Zen River.

– Three little fingers, the master replies.

– So who can swim in this river?

– The mountain.1

.The extensive trajectory of Dudi Maia Rosa’s work has a milestone, described in many of his statements and discussed in several critical texts, which is almost an origin fable—and we know that fable is not necessarily the opposite of truth.It is said that, at a certain point, there was some sort of revelation, when he invented what he then called “fiber,” an artistic object basically made of polyester resin, fiberglass and pigments, which has a tendency to be three-dimensional. While also umbilically linked to the long formal and symbolic tradition of painting, it dissolves the distinction between image and support.

Later nicknamed simply as “resins,” these works have served as a laboratory for Dudi’s production—although not exclusively— and their general appearance has gone through several generations, often evoking a “painting,” but in its own way. We just cannot say he has done everything possible with them because, after all, he hasn’t stopped, as this exhibition shows. Created by the artist on a horizontal mold, one of the particularities of the “resin” is that what was at the bottom of the mold becomes the surface when the material solidifies and is lifted vertically to present itself to us. It is as if what we see in these works originated from the movement of making something submerged come to the surface.

Almost all the “resins” in this exhibition are recent or have never been shown before, with just one exception: the one with wide pink zigzag bands. It connects the new works to a well-established lineage in Dudi’s production, which adds the generous expansion of color to the (affectionately ironic) outcrop of references taken from art history. For example, the brushstroke, the graphism, the stripe, the positive-negative game, traces of an established style, symbolic iconography (like the ouroboros snake), appropriated images (such as cinema muses Monica Vitti and Odete Lara), and even the painting itself and its frame —imbued with humor, the materiality of the art object is, and is not, the representation itself. A certain rusticitystands out in the new works, whether in the fragmentation of the large colored plates or in the frank roughness of certain surfaces, or in the way the very substance that gives shape to these worksis uncovered.

Rusticity and fragmentation are equally present in the body (and in the contemporary soul) of another group of works shown here—the small works that seem to simultaneously attract and generate shapes, and where painting also left its traces. Along with pieces of different materials of which we can almost recognize their previous employment, some objects that can be easily identified appear on these compact surfaces as well: the sardine can, the music box mechanism, the ribbon bow, the toy animal, the incomplete reproduction of a painting, and much more. From this perspective, theseworks are also similar to the sculptures presented here, since we can glimpse recognizable shapes on the verge of revelation, of becoming fully shaped (a harp? a railing? an architectural ornament? none of these things?) or as if they were fresh from pure matter (a lightning? a musical note? another sign?).

There is another ‘family’ in Dudi’s works, some of which included here, that evokes fables and coming to the surface: the Cábulas series, made on canvas, paper and other materials, mixing industrial and artisanal techniques in an unusual way.  If much of what we see in the “resins” can be considered as a movement in space, in Cábulas this movement extends further in time, through the collective memory. This is because their images were taken—and then reprocessed—from old cartoons, still retaining the visual effect of film fables. With such a DNA, it is no surprise that these scenes and apparitions of isolated objects that float on a more or less homogeneous background are a bit like the remains of a dream—which also suggest possible analogies to sculptures and small reliefs, where some things can be seen individually (or promise to do so) amidst what is not completely revealed or perhaps just uninterested in any mimesis.

Finally, between moments of recognition and strangeness, the selection of works shown at Instituto Ling was oriented by the identification of a complex of crossed references within different families of Dudi Maia Rosa’s production. If this is true, by bringing them together, a solidarity of shapes, color qualities, textures and more or less direct references to art conventions enhances the effective seduction of its materiality, where light operates in so many ways. In an elementary proposition from his Remarks on Colour, dealing with our usual concepts about vision, Wittgenstein stated that “transparency and reflection exist only in the dimension of depth of a visual image.” Jumping from the logical analysis to dive into other language games around the works here presented, I imagine tides that rise and fall, oscillating between their bottom and their surface. In other words: when looking at what most attracts us in these works, we should also consider their “draft”—that distance between a boat’s submerged keel and the visible waterline. Led by Dudi, we’re all on this boat.