Solidão (Solitude)

“In Iberê’s paintings from the 1990s, the landscapes seem to be generated from within. From inside the painter himself, from inside the human bodies in the paintings; as if made to their measure. This feature is notable even in his final painting, Solidão (Solitude). The landscapes are mostly limited to a horizon line separating the sky from the earth, the top from the bottom. It is as if the bodies needed that minimal sign, that index of landscape, to feel fixed to something; as if these bodies were in fact excreting the sign of the landscape to feel themselves in the world, in a world. The flat horizon line seems to originate from inside the bodies. Landscapes that are simultaneously places, places-bodies that seem to have very weak connections with the world we live in. They question our materiality.
[...] The horizon is a tenuous line, with no other element to indicate a place, a landscape, a transit place. It has the same density as the outlines of the bodies, and the same tone. [...]
Phantoms in a world of no density, no weight. A spectral universe, like the one the artist had explored before, with different formal characteristics. But this painting no longer deals with subjective criticism but is rather a testament: inconclusive, perhaps; but nonetheless definitive. Iberê ran out of time to complete this painting, which is why its final result will always be to raise questions.”
Icleia Borsa Cattani, Paisagens de dentro: as últimas pinturas de Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2009), 54-55.