If it were literature, perhaps Xandi’s work would be a poem. Not a mannered, imposing, impenetrable poet-to-poet kind of poem, but a haikai, which combines common language to a fixed structure to distill the beauty of an instant, with no need for metaphors or similes: just the thing as it is. But I don’t think he’s going to like the comparison – a bit overused, no? – so I’m going to change it. If it was literature, perhaps Xandi’s work would be one of those poems made of every day, written by an Angélica Freitas or an Adília Lopes, two experts in turning the ordinary into wonder.

When talking about his work, Xandi (Alexandre Canonico) uses a quiet tone to speak slowly and measuredly. He is patient and generous. “Is it the saw that makes this kind of hole here?” “No, Adri, the drill drills the hole.” Although he likes to talk about his work, especially about its making, he prefers not to over explain. He also uses inevitable quite frequently. “Why is it like this?” or “Why does this look like a drop, an ass, a finger, or a fruit?” “Inevitable” is the answer, with the exception of a synonym here and there, always rhymed, like inescapable or unavoidable. With time, I began to realize that inevitable is the point at which understanding ends and only desire remains. That which made Orpheus turn to Eurydice and ruin it all. But since Xandi is not the kind of artist who stands in front of his work, raises his arm and announces “There, my desire”, inevitability becomes the most plausible explanation. Faced with the untold desire that animates art making, inevitable is the only viable answer. “Nothing important, just irreplaceable”, Clarice Lispector would say.

Some say that Xandi’s works are paintings: spray paint on MDF. He says they are drawings. They are drawings and things, the drawing of the thing and the thing itself. Being the very thing, the drawing is beautiful, perfect, but useless, like a map on a natural scale. The saw draws the outline, color gives content and movement explains the shape. The work doesn’t say something, it is something. It emerges from a horizontal, mutual and reciprocated relationship with his material and tools. Immersed in the patient liturgy of a carpenter, he makes, unmakes, and waits to understand what can be made. It is between making and what can be made that he finds the right place for every cut, every fitting, every shape, every color.

Thee new pieces are big: 185 x 137 cm, half a standard MDF board. He buys the boards already cut in half, so they fit in the elevator and he can carry them inside the studio. The presence of contingency in Xandi’s work is so prevalent that sometimes it seems that he is just waiting for the perfect accident, the materialization of the game between what we make happen and what happens to us. The holes in Carcomido (2022), in Sore Knuckles (2022) and in several other works from 2021 and 2022 first appeared when he began cutting shapes in the center of the boards, without using the edges to start sawing. “First, you make a hole with a drill, so you can get the saw into it. That’s when I noticed the hole and started repeating it.” The once functional becomes poetry. Need is turned into beauty. It is as if each element has to find its own way into the work. The image of the adhesive tape – which appears in Sacanagem (2022), Quina (2022) and in all exhibited works – first appeared when Xandi was painting a screw. “I used tape to hold the screw, so it wouldn’t fly away with the spray paint. Then, when I removed the tape, its negative was perfect.” This practice of calculated accident or planned spontaneity, not only reveals an appreciation of chance but anchors the work in its making. A mode of making that is neither unaccompanied nor magical, but experienced, immersed in the universe of material and tool, and committed to luck.

In order to add paint to the boards, Xandi removes the cutouts and spray paints them. When he returns the painted pieces into their original holes, the color movement becomes evident, situating the gaze and giving meaning to the white MDF. However, the pieces do not hold any meaning. It is not the color that takes on meaning. We are the ones giving meaning to it; meaning as the promise of a possible, temporarily obvious solution, like a case of pareidolia: the urge to impose a meaningful interpretation to a nebulous stimulus. To look for a face in a cloud. A passing cloud. Seen from afar, absent-mindedly or at first glance, the works seem to contain ideas or perhaps hypotheses of ideas. But up close, what looked like an idea becomes a thing.

Being a thing is the ambition of Xandi’s work, and it is the desire to be a thing that roots the work, a work that is grounded in craft, that goes for the uncomplicated to say what it feels like saying. But in middle of his MDF boards, Xandi cuts windows, leaving gaps for the absurd, for that which we want to say but fail. For me, beyond those windows, the sun is shining. My hand casts a shadow over the words I am writing. It is inevitable not to understand it all, just as it is inevitable to try to understand.  

Adriana Francisco

São Paulo, January 2023.