In Trilha, Iran do Espírito Santo’s new exhibition at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo, the artist presents a new series in which he represents vinyl records in watercolor. Each work was conceived by the artist according to specific songs and albums, which led to a sort of autobiographical soundtrack, highlighting compositions from the Brazilian repertoire, from MPB to classical music and rock. 

No two records have the same “fingerprint,” since each has its own specific grooves and width between tracks. Like the experience of listening to a record, Iran’s watercolors, though executed with surgical precision on a true-to-life scale, still carry crackles and some ambient noise, as the manual nature of the works inevitably leads to the appearance of little accidents. This is a loss in image fidelity, accentuating the physical process behind each piece’s creation. The main structure of meaning in these 12 watercolors, as in Iran’s oeuvre as a whole, lies beyond the immediately visible and takes root in the intellectual processes articulated by him as an artist and by ourselves as viewers.  

In the autobiographical dimension of this new body of work, the traces that music makes in memory are figured in the reflective sheen on the depictions of vinyl records, which Iran constructs by allowing the white of the paper to appear behind thinner coats of paint. These shining paths rotate successively, sectioning the circle discs like the hands on a clock. 12 paintings of 12 records and 12 tracks from each, like 12 hours out of the day or 12 months in a year. These watercolors, like an ear that is always listening, are constantly layering the singularity of perception over the plurality of experience.