Tudo te é falso e inútil I (Everything is False and Useless to You I)

“Tudo te é falso e inútil (Everything is False and Useless to You) is the name of a series of works from the 1990s which take their title and inspiration from a poem by Fernando Pessoa, Vem, noite antiquíssima e idêntica [Come, Oh most ancient and identical of nights]. In this poem, the night, wise and eternal, that saw the gods come into being, smiles because ‘everything is false and useless for you’. The figures in the work strike a pose from the image evoked by this verse, women like the night, both in this series and another related one called As idiotas (The Idiots). The palette of colors is also reminiscent of the symbolic hues of night: blues and the silver-white of moonlight. The twilight of a spent day, the twilight of life: these works allude to an existential indifference which the painter revives in worn-down figures who smile with all the bland innocence of a newborn. However, in their smiles we do not see the wisdom of night but rather the blank grin of the alienated."
María José Herrera, Iberê Camargo: um ensaio visual (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2009), 100.

“We can see that the features of the landscapes and the bodies dematerialising into transparent forms that seem to create each other were characteristic by the 1990s. The paintings in the Tudo te é falso e inútil (Everything is False and Useless to You) series have basically the same structure: a large-proportioned female human figure positioned vertically across the right of the canvas. The body is schematic, as in Solidão (Solitude), lines and colours are more concentrated in the faces, being the focal points in the space. The paintings are blue, almost monochrome, although a warmer colour can be discerned emerging at times beneath the surface. Objects can be seen next to the bodies, differentiating one painting from another: a bicycle, a chair perhaps, just suggested, together with some unidentifiable forms. The human figures in turn continue with similar features to those of the As Idiotas (Idiots) paintings. It is as if their own bodies created their successors; or as if a single, unique body had migrated from one painting to another, causing changes in the landscape, creating it according to its needs on each occasion.”
Icleia Borsa Cattani, Paisagens de dentro: as últimas pinturas de Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2009), 52-54.