Mannequin

“It is nonetheless intriguing that an artist, so little indulgent with mass culture as Iberê had become interested in the mannequins exposed in the shop windows, to the point of making them one of the central motifs of his latest production. [...] In the dummies of Iberê there is no, it seems to me, the pursuit of a metaphysical essence (though in the case of De Chirico, this essence is an absence), nor the construction of an object of desire. Reduced to the plastic material, naked or adorned in a grotesque way, these beings that simulate life are natural companions of the seated women, of the idiots, of the cyclists, with whom they share the space of so many paintings and engravings. What unites them is an inert availability to the world, without sense, without wish: they are junkbodies, body-trash. [...]”
Lorenzo Mammí, Iberê Camargo: as horas [o tempo como motivo] (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2014), 86.

“The figures in this series are treated synthetically, with an emphasis on the linear quality of modelling in thick, emphatic paint, in drawing that is superimposed on an almost flattened background. The effect of intensity is increased by the appearance of the tragic masks, completing the tormented and convulsed bodies with dark, empty, hollow eyes, sightless and inert.”
Paulo Gomes, Iberê e seu ateliê: as coisas, as pessoas e os lugares (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2015), 155.