Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, Brazil · 2021
Malakoi – Desviado
Three years of classical study, and the first time the painter and the novelist shared a room.
On September 19, 2021, Régis Souto opened a solo exhibition of paintings and launched his first novel, Malakoi – Desviado (Editora Viseu), in the same room. The paintings came out of three years of classical training. Part of the proceeds went to an organization supporting LGBTQIA+ youth.
Before transgression, the basics
For three years, Régis trained in classical painting at Cozinha da Pintura in São Paulo, under Prof. Dr. Marcio Alessandri. The course works through old-master portraits and still lifes, from the Dutch and Italian Baroque to nineteenth-century academic painting, one stage at a time.
“To transgress, you first have to know the basics.”
Régis Souto
The studies
Smaller still-life studies, fruit and flowers on round canvases, hung in the air around the room.
“The Baroque gave me the solid foundations of my current technique.”
Oil as the final skin of every painting. Velature, transparent layers that glow from beneath. Skin built from an imprimatura of earth colors.
The textured gesso terrain. The mixed-media layers. The black line.
“The Baroque doesn't define me, but it always shows me a way forward whenever I'm not sure where to go.”
Régis Souto
Malakoi
A dark fantasy about desire between men in a kingdom where it is a death sentence. At the launch, the book and the paintings were shown together: two languages for the same body of work.
Irmãs,
Nós não escolhemos como vamos nascer, não pedimos músculos, peitorais fortes e peludos e nem mesmo a virilidade tão valorizada nos homens. Não nos deram essa opção.
[…]
Quando qualquer mulher, seja nesse ou em outro reino é violentada, ou vítima de qualquer ação que a diminua perante os homens, se esta mulher tentar buscar justiça pelo mal recebido, ela certamente terá sua palavra questionada. Não importa de onde vem o dedo. Ele sempre aponta para nós, mulheres.
Sisters,
We did not choose how we would be born. We did not ask for muscles, for strong and hairy chests, nor for the virility so prized in men. We were not given that option.
[…]
When any woman, in this kingdom or any other, is violated — or made the victim of any act that diminishes her before men — if she tries to seek justice for the harm done to her, her word will surely be questioned. It does not matter where the finger comes from. It always points at us. At women.
The English edition, Malakoi: The Deviant Throne, is in development.
Read about the novel →
Invitation, 2021. The novel was first published under the pen name Refer Libérico; all future editions carry the name Régis Souto.
Also on the walls: commissions from the first years after the studies, where blue and magenta took over the palette.
Pope John Paul II
Oil on canvas · 1 × 2 m · six months of work
Painted for a private commission and shown at the launch.