Fredo Conde

Não Me Consumas / ConsuMe Not

In the European-Portuguese dialect, when interaction with a person or group of people reaches the point of saturation, there is a phrase regularly used to express the moment of exhaustion with the social encounter. Não me consumas equates to the exasperated desire—verging on begging—to not be consumed by the other person.

In Não Me Consumas / ConsuMe Not, Fredo Conde presents a group of paintings that explore his preoccupation with being a person within a society that is culturally expected and reduced to “acquire” and “ingest” without discretion.

Conde's work is informed by a quotidian of interests derived from the struggle to make a living, attaining sustenance, and the strife for survival. Art influences originate from modernist painting, Rousseau, Primitivism, and Brasilian modernism.

References to Darwinism, predation, financial-market systems, and anthropophagy are made through the incorporation of visual symbols and use of work titles that develop analogies supporting Conde's view related to societal anxieties in consuming and being consumed by the people and environment around us.