From a very young age, Mazzuchini recognised his own body as an active part of sacred actions, of ritual constructions where each piece, fragment, colour and action work together leading to a transcendent outcome.
This focus on visual construction as a way of ritualising the ordinary will be the driving force throughout his career as a visual artist, translating an awareness of corporeality into painting. His experience as an actor gives Mazzuchini's work that unavoidable dramatic atmosphere that characterises theatrical art. Without even needing to tell a story, we are able to feel the tension within the snapshot. The artist visually arranges his scenes like the lens of a cinematographer, through fragments of sharp emotion, perhaps at the climax of the scene or just at the key moment to reveal the storyline. Through a purposely baroque palette of colours, the artist promises to lead us into a hypnotic state, without the need for finished faces or an excess of elements; simply using paint in gestural strokes that speak to us of transience, of the ephemeral and of a living dimension between matter and the invisible. Juliano Mazzuchini manages to gather pictorial categories without landing on any one, giving his brush a cinematographic touch by creating frames rather than compositions, enlightenment rather than light.
"My painting process meets photography [...] In the period of the pandemic I began to work on images that I call "pre-painted", by photographing my own body, lending myself to the construction of the scene and the gesture that I would paint. [...] This procedure then becomes a continuous part of my process; it creates a connection between my previous experience as a performer and the production in the visual arts, creating a performance for my paintings, like an actor-painter in the para-theatre".
Juliano Mazzuchini was born in 1981 in a small town near Sao Paulo called Jacareí. He grew up in a family of metallurgists with no artistic inclinations. His childhood was shaped by visits to retreats and celebrations of Afro-descendant religious groups with his mother, who is a strong believer in God and spirituality. This led to a growing interest in the dimensions of the mysterious and ritualistic.
During his childhood and adolescence he became familiar with many religions, and he also lived for a few months in a Catholic monastery. After leaving this monastic experience, he studied drama between 2004 and 2007. He became an actor, with a preference for epic theatre.
After ten years dedicated mainly to theatre, his artistic interests turned to the field of visual arts, painting and figurative art.
"In 2017 I started painting and moved on to engage myself with visual arts, carrying over my religious and performing experiences."
Artistic research has allowed him to hold solo exhibitions in Brazil and Argentina, where he currently lives.
His background as a performer and his change of direction towards the visual arts are the first hints of the interdisciplinary nature of his artistic production.
Enriched with quotations from the past, Mazzuchini's creations are inspired - as the painter himself admits - by 17th century artists such as Rembrandt and Velázquez, without, however, disassociating himself from contemporary references.