André Ramos, better known as “Kit”, is a graphic designer from Rio de Janeiro who began his journey into the arts in 1990 and has since worked in several creative fields, such as advertising, graphic design, audiovisual, set design, visual arts and photography. In 1993, he immersed himself in the world of computer graphics and image manipulation and in 1999 he joined six other designers and artists to create RODA, a visual arts studio where he developed several projects. In 2004, he returned to photography, now digital, recording his travels around Brazil and the world and has dedicated himself to fine art photography since 2007. With a master’s and doctorate in design, in addition to being a visual artist, he is also a professor of the Visual Communication/Design Course at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
How did your journey into the art world begin?
Although I was a creative child and had been expressing myself artistically since I was young, it was when I enrolled in the visual communication course at PUC-Rio that my mind and eyes were awakened to art. It was in painting classes that I met a professor who had a profound influence on me. Through my time with master Urian Agria, I explored materials such as pastel, pigments, lines and tricks. It was in classes with live models that I learned more about the human body and learned to express myself artistically. That was when I fell in love with watercolors and collages. It was also in college that I came into contact with photography through the classes of another great professor. Extremely technical without disconnecting from creativity, I learned from Rodrigo Lopes how to frame, record and, under the red light of a photo lab, enlarge my first images. Subjects such as Art History expanded my visual and conceptual repertoire.
How would you describe your artistic style?
I wouldn't say I have a specific artistic style, but through a subtle perspective, I capture fragments of time and manipulate the light that passes through my lens, creating a mix of reality and dream. In this way, I fill my work with surrealist and expressionist aspects, contemplated in the search for creating an original set of photographic illusionism.
What is your creative process like?
My research is currently focused on abstract photography, and I develop my visual production based on a section of time that is capable of capturing movement and its continuity. With this, I create abstractions that explore new perspectives on photographic aesthetics. Today, I create photography that is dissociated from the instant, from the mere recording of something. I have chosen to avoid freezing in my artistic production. I have been developing a perspective on abstract photography, which plays with time, inserting movement into the creative process. I move between the predictable and the spontaneous. I seek to create ephemeral compositions and collages that do not undergo any digital manipulation when transformed into abstract paintings.
What materials and techniques do you use most often?
Technically speaking, these are images that I produce from long exposures and the gesture of the photographic act, also called ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). My work emerges from the exploration of paintings, drawings, typography, photos and textures that may originate from magazines, image banks or captured by me and that undergo a reinterpretation, through a collage/installation/sculpture. Under carefully planned lighting, these compositions are photographed, gaining color, movement and growing in dimension. The long exposure and the gesture bring focus and configure my discourse.
Who are the artistic influences that have impacted your work?
My gaze is referenced by several artists. Among painters and photographers, I am particularly enchanted by works such as those created by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Pollock, Rothko, Kandinsky, Barbara Kasten, Dave McKean, Man Ray, Hannah Whitaker, Cig Harvey and Aleksandr Babarikin among others.
