The panoramic is one of the most complete forms of the panoptic vision. To see everything. Today, however, a view intended to be comprehensive only evidences the problem of apprehending the great dimensions of metropolitan landscapes. The eye registers only scenes of limited reach, bounded by obstacles, directed by the immediate experience. The complexity and fragmentation of the globalized world are no longer accessible to the individual perception.
Cássio works with the resource of the panoramic. An image from São Paulo’s East Side is cut out in 68 parts, disposed in different plans. Hanging, they look like an exhibition of photos that could be seen separately. The subject resides in this operation of deconstruction. So that the final composition is acquired, images have different sizes and are enlarged in different scales. Plus: details of the urban landscape, located in the image background, are placed in the foreground, while nearby elements in the scene are disposed in the back. A rigorous mathematical calculation was necessary to determine the proportions of each enlargement.
The scene doesn’t offer itself immediately to the observer. The perception of the whole – in fact always fugacious, due to the several interferences – requires an exercise of adjustment, it demands time. Today, the observation of an imaginary record of the city implies work. The image no longer offers itself to contemplation, but constitutes a material for abstract representations.
In a moment when satellite images, capable of more and more precise zooms of portions of the urban territory, promise us an apprehension of their configuration and dynamics, Cássio decomposes the panoramic perspective structure, the basic form of the urban landscape’s photographic image, to emphasize that this perception results from analysis and reflection procedures.
Nelson Brissac