Dislecsia
It is with pride that Noorderlicht presents the world premiere of Dislecsia, a work that photographer and visual artist Miguel Rio Branco has created especially for the Noorderlicht Photogallery. Dislecsia is a large collage of more than 100 photographs from every stage in Rio Branco's life. It includes new, never previously seen work, and there are photographs as far as from 1968, the year in which he debuted as a photographer.
For Miguel Rio Branco (Brazil, b. 1946) it is poetic reality that counts. It is not reality that is real, but the way in which he as an artist experiences it and recreates it. On the basis of his ideas and emotions he composes his collages and installations by assembling apparently disconnected images to create one entity. The result is a confounding game with reality.
Dislecsia is inspired by Rio Branco’s young daughter. Rio Branco saw a relationship between her and his own unique way of dealing with the world, the basis for his way of thinking, talking and working. In this sense, Dislecsia forms the key to his oeuvre. It is not only a ‘reconstruction’ of the work that was lost during the major fire in his studio in 1980, it is also the ultimate demonstration of the way he works. As a whole, composed according to Rio Branco’s own rules into an entirely new artwork, Dislecsia affords a surprising insight into Rio Branco’s ‘different manner of thinking’. Or as he puts it, into the dyslexia that makes him unique as an artist.