From one identity to another
From one identity to another,
from one language to another
from one continent to another,
from one country to another,
Daniel Nicolaevsky Maria never stops crossing boundaries,
crossing borders, those that surround, those that prevent and imprison.
From his personal trajectory to his journey of production, he revel and play with these borders, with these obstacles, and happily authorizes the passage from one territory to another, from one production to another, from one scale to another and from one mode to another.
In the permanent and subtle search for a balance between all the realities that constitute him, between all the forms and modalities that he implements and works, Daniel creates plural devices that allow him to cross spaces as tangible as they are mental.
And this is how he goes from photo to object, from writing to dance and performance: from the immaterial to the material, from density to lightness and from mass to evanescence.
His research takes him to the proximity of the children of communities to whom he looks with empathy, to portraits that he fragments to better mark the unity of the subjects he photographs, but also takes him to the dimension of play that, serious as pleasure, he never avoids .
In the tangle of bodies and gestures, the postures appear and are marked and, in doing so, they mark the space and modify it. Slowly, the scenography unfolds and the lighting effects make Daniel's work even more palpable in space, rhythm and body.
Slowly, he radicalized his approach and his experiments and dared to affirm this contradiction between the body, dense, compact, massive and grace, dexterity and ease of movement and movement in space.
But he does not renounce the sensuality of colors and natural materials that interact with the video image, the film and its multimedia supports. Here again, the alliance of seemingly contradictory elements finds a balance.
In search of himself through the other, in search of his own body through the body of the other, here, in this search and in this work, the body becomes the challenge of all searches, as well as the result of all possibilities. Thus, the artist, in a tireless and determined search, links the sensual to the intellect, the pleasure to the mind: the carnal and the spiritual.
At a point of balance.
Gaya Goldcymer
Paris, April 2019
a simple brush stroke
With Daniel Nicolaevsky Maria, even a simple sweep can become the beginning of a true contemporary ballet in the blink of an eye.
It was what the artist demonstrated during his master thesis with a performance show conceived and performed by him in martial mode. Barefoot, shirtless and on the floor of the Chapelle des Beaux-Arts, his performance, entitled "From war to art", seems to challenge the centuries of classical art and, in particular, the reproduction of the equestrian statue of the Colleone de Verrocchio.
Dominating the space like a warrior, it is however a message of peace that he wears, which materializes through his shirt, which he transforms into a white flag. As sensual as it is radical, with flexibility and vigor, his work alludes to slavery and the cause of minorities around the world.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, to the sound of carnival and evangelistic songs, he studied visual arts and 3D animation in São Paulo, at the same time he practiced samba, zouk and tango daily. He dedicated himself entirely to contemporary dance with Emmanuelle Huynh at Beaux-Arts in Paris. In his personal Pantheon, he mentions choreographers Philippe Découflé or Ralph Lemon, but also performer Tino Sehgal and videographer Steve McQueen.
This young artist, who takes art to heart and does not hesitate to insert videos, but also music to his work, was awarded the Friend of Fine Arts Award in 2019 and presented a performance at the Galerie du Jour / Agnès b .. With only accessories strings hanging in the gallery, referring to the "four Toltec agreements", he addressed the issue of social ties and bonds.
Tied up, suspended above the ground, he showed himself as a force of nature, but impregnated with wisdom and talent.
Anaïd Demir
Paris, March 2020