Juau aka Oysterboi
joão was born in São Paulo and moved, with some still blurry memories, to the other side of the pond, settling in barcelona. he lives there with three people, a rubber skeleton and a dog named rumi.
in his free time he draws and experiments with audiovisual media, he makes weird music and weird art but he has fun doing those things.
INSTAGRAM: @oysterboiart
HI JUAU, How’re you doing today?
Hi, i’m doing pretty good to be honest, i just finished rewatching isle of dogs which made me very happy, and it’s been a very chill day. got out by morning and walked for a bit, chatted with cool people, drew a bit, listened to good music; little things that weren’t exactly exciting but made a nice day on the go.
How long have you been an artist?
I’m not sure what to classify as an artist but i remember painting chaotic silly paintings when i was 5 or around that age and then when i was about 11 i wanted to learn how to draw and since then i’ve been scribbling on papers and glass screens
How has the pandemic changed the way you work?
I would say that it has changed it in a good way, without having to go to school, and being all the time indoors, i got to draw more and artistically evolve more rapidly, i also ended up spending more time on social media which lead to me digest more art and be persuaded to adopt different compositions, techniques, style characteristics that i found online. i had already been doing that before the pandemic, but on a smaller and slower rate.
What inspires you?
Everything and nothing, sometimes i’m inspired by nature, coral formations, nineteenth century engravings, tasmanian fauna, fish; but sometimes all of those things just seem boring to me, it’s weird and if i could choose i would like to be inspired by them all the time. Sometimes I also get inspired by the silliest things like fridge magnets. To avoid feeling uninspired I try to maintain a library of concepts in my head and if I don't know what to create I can always merge unrelated concepts in that library. Another thing that inspires me (it’s more of a concept and not a concrete subject) is the innocence of children’s drawings, the way their brains synthesize information is marvellous.
Do you ever collaborate with people?
I have done a couple of collaborations. I would like to do them more often though, i have recently made an illustration with @flesh.png and a funky zine with @icuffmyjeans , the zine is not about funk, it’s just that it ended up being very funky hehe.
If you could collaborate with anyone dead or alive who would it be?
I don’t think i would be able to choose only one, i would die before getting to decide, but here’s a few:
Visual artists (painting/drawing): lizbeth rojas (liizoni), otto dix, raysa fontana (desktopgirl), alexandria couch (cosmocouch), francisco de goya, toma vagner, hieronymus bosch, jefferson costa, flávia brioschi (flavushh), icuffmyjeans (again), linnea sterte (turndecassette), noel fielding, stephanie cheng (gohan.bubbles), pieter bruegel the elder, julia soboleva and so many more
musical artists (me doing something visual for them): tyler the creator, mgmt, death grips, molchat doma, brockhampton, zeca baleiro, erik satie, thundercat (some of them because of their music and some because it would be fun to experiment creating something with them)
writers: ray bradbury, ursula k. le guin, isaac asimov (for some of his short stories, like gimmicks three, not for him as a person and not for his oversexualised characters), mike mignola, patrick mchale, kafka, júlio cortázar (i have only read the canary murder case ii but i would love to illustrate that).
wes anderson
what are you working on at the moment?
i’m writing the answers to an interview that ostrich magazine was very kind to send to me hehe.
i’m not really working on big and long projects because it would be very hard to do that and consistently share my art and also focus in school so for now no big projects. apart from that, i do spend some of my freetime experimenting with music and i’m making a little album, not that i think people will want to hear it, but it’s a fun little project, and maybe i can do an animated video for one of the tunes from this semi hypothetical album when i’m done with it, who knows... for now, short projects.
You have a very clear style/strong style. How long did it take you to find your style?
i might have to slightly disagree with the question, or with the affirmation that precedes the question. i don’t think i have a very clear style, i find myself to be quite inconsistent at what i do and also i’m very indecisive so i’m always alternating between 6 or more different styles. it took me very long to find a style that suited me and even longer for me to accept that i could use more than one style in my works. and it’s still taking long because i don’t think i’ll ever settle, even though i sometimes go back to some style characteristics and repeat them i’m constantly changing the way i do stuff. if you scroll on my instagram profile you will face a dark past dating back to mid 2018, the style evolution is present and it stops for some weeks but then it keeps going.
Is there any symbolism / hidden meanings within your work?
sometimes i try to make the symbolism very strong and i can get to spend more time doing research on different cultures and symbols than drawing the actual thing and then sometimes i don’t put any effort on making it have a meaning (those are usually the ones that i disguise by putting “fig.” or assigning numbers and letters to different items in the composition so it confuses the people that see it, it’s great fun).
If you could change one thing about the art world what would it be?
the way prices are assigned to art. and the way the art market is just like the economy where a few on the top sell art for gigantic prices and there are thousands if not millions of artists that contribute to the art world and don’t get the deserved recognition and money. and also how lately art has been starting to be treated as content, and in consequence artists feel pressured to make more art not for the sake of making art but to entertain an audience.
If you could give someone one piece of advice at the beginning of their career, what would you say to them?
take criticism, the biggest amount of criticism that you can handle, and listen to people who you admire and trust. and make art for fun, only do it if you enjoy doing it, don’t think about money, don’t think about audience, don’t think about renown, only you and art. and give the same value to silly things that matter to you than to “important” art that you think people will like, actually, give more importance to silly art that makes you happy.
Where would you like to see yourself in 10 years time?
alive, and making art, or at least making something that i enjoy, and if it’s possible, with people that i enjoy.
Colour is clearly crucial to your work. IS there a particular reason or meaning behind your use of such bold colours?
yes, i got tired of putting effort into line art and decided to balance that by using some more colors, also not even a year ago i was hugely inspired by dave stewart`s way of coloring but my inspirations changed and i began to like more vibrant colors, and red, i love red. it was also because after doing badtober which was all black and white i felt something was missing, and then, kaboom.
Is there somebody/friend or artist that inspires you in particular?
yes! @icuffmyjeans @flesh.png @snacktoast @juliasobolevaillustration @jeff_costa_rm @flavushh @utop.i @gohan.bubbles @terrence_maluleke @liizoni @lollalette @sheriff.bones @starlows @molly.fairhurst @zachjosephillustration @joandraws7 @bhramarii @1unch_m3at @shauncytan @kickrats @cooldog94 @nephrosoupp @rosasawyers @magsmunroe @turndecassette @cosmocouch @desktopgirl @thecanvasmenagerie @marc.teixi some of them are friends, very cool people, and others probably don’t even know that i exist.
Who/what is your greatest source of inspiration?
i don’t think i have a source of inspiration. inspiration, more than a well that directly provides you, is a field that you have to harvest to get the crops and then you have to wash the crops and clean them because you want the inspiration and only the inspiration, or not, sometimes you want inspiration to come as the whole grain so it carries other little things with it that help you build something stable around that inspiration. it’s not a source it’s a farm of inspiration and depending on the artists, references, consumed content, et cetera that you plant, the inspiration that comes is always different.
all of that to say that i don’t know who inspires me the most. maybe cultural diversity inspires me, it’s very cool to see how they gradually change depending on where you are. cultures are never pure and they can’t be separated by borderlines. i find it very interesting to see cultures from places that are in the middle of cultural transitions and are influenced by multiple traditions at once. it makes you see that you can always mix unrelated concepts and create a new, different one. that’s very neat.
coming back to this question, I would also like to add that, as i mentioned earlier, the way children simplify and synthesize information when representing it visually inspires me quite a lot. i’m not saying that my goal is to simplify like them, but there’s something magical in the process, maybe because it’s almost an instinctive way of processing information and they usually only represent what’s necessary for it to make sense, nothing is redundant.
and now that i’m thinking, a great inspiration might be shaun tan because he uses a bazillion different styles but they are all somehow connected and always convey a similar feeling.
Which city best suits the soul of your artworks?
hehe that’s a hard one. i feel like maybe hallstatt (china) (五矿·哈施塔特) because of its absurdity or an hypothetical city where the main architecture styles are a bit of brutalism, modernism, frank lloyd wright buildings, lina bo bardi’s glass house from 1951 and 1950s japanese architecture.
What is your favourite painting/work of art you have ever done?
the one where there are fish and molluk feasting or the willem dafoe one or the gromit appreciation post, but i also don’t dislike the one with the fish with boobs from last week.
So lovely to talk to you today, anything else planned for the day?
the pleasure was mine, i’ll probably pet my dog, have dinner and then maybe draw some ostriches. and i’ll probably go to sleep later than i should.
