Born in 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, Antonio Bokel graduated in Graphic Design from Univercidade in 2004.He had his first solo exhibition in 2003 at Ken’s Gallery in Florence, Italy, where he lived andtookcourses in Photography and Art History. In Rio de Janeiro, he took live modelling classes with Bandeirade Mello and painting courses with João Magalhães and Luiz Ernesto at the Parque Lage School ofVisual Arts. Over the last two decades, he has presented his work in Brazil and abroad.
In the words of Vanda Klabin, Antonio Bokel reveals a constant intersection between art and the fabricof urban life, as constitutive parts of its symbolic universe. He uses this experience of the city asexistential sequences–there he builds his referential space, there he seems to invent a territory, therehe intends to constitute an aesthetic and spatial extension in a broader dimension. In this area ofintersection, there is a capacity for poetic improvisation based on the assimilation of the most variedmaterials and supports, such as enigmatic objects, urban utensils, insertion of letters, word games orliterary fragments, which appear in murals, on surfaces of canvases, photographs, sculptures or spatialinstallations. But it is in his painting that we find the chords of his field of action, indicative of anintegrating force of his aesthetic concerns, by balancing colors, shapes and volumes in a mosaic ofrhythmic brushstrokes that bring to light the asymmetriesof the world
