Belio Magazine (Spain) has launched it's new issue - BACK TO THE ROOTS.

Pablo IA (from Belio's team) has made an interview with Bruno 9li in his most recent public apparition.

Belio - online store:
http://www.beliomagazine.com/store/belio030-back-roots-p-139.html

Check out the online interview below:

Belio > The first time we came across his stuff on the internet we immediately freaked out. His art has something special, something magical that makes us believe in “something” else. We waited for the right moment to invite him to become part of our “family” of artists. And when we made the interview and read more about him and the background of his art, we fell even deeper in love with his magical path. It has been a bit difficult to get this interview, but we feel happy to present him as it should be: revealed!

One of the main characteristics of your early work are the selective colors you used, mainly black + white + red + cyan. Is there any special reason for this choice? Maybe "less is more"?

First I have to say that this interview is guided by Free Entities. And also, it has not been answered in my first language –Portuguese– so maybe it can come along with a little noise or scratch like on a vinyl. I’ll try to be as didactic as I can with my ideas. So, this combination you’ve mentioned have not been the main colors in my last 3 series of works. I’ve inserted green and shades of green, orange and yellow to my compositions. At the very beginning I was focused on experimenting and developing my drawings by using lines only. I was sharpening my lines like a knife and breezing through the most direct and simple form of visual expression in my universe - ink on paper. So at the beginning it was only black ink over white paper – two opposites, two extremes, 0 and 1 in the binary structure. I must say that drawing is the structure, the fundament, like the skeleton of an image. During this phase I was developing balance, rhythm and my narrative. By the years I felt the necessity to amplify my repertoire of techniques to give more intensity to my visual representation of ideas.

Your work is a weird mixture of organic and geometric elements, with stripes, triangles and squares that form patterns between free shapes that seem like martian vegetation... Are you interested in the connection between nature and mathematics? Where do you get the inspiration for these patterns?

I see organic forms, mathematics and geometry all connected. I mean, I let my intuition work and create, elaborate combinations that I believe are so intense as is my sense of being alive at this time and space. My style shows up by the way my mind organizes all elements in a state of constant learning, and it happens inspired in the most rare singularity I can find inside myself. If you imagine a dinosaur or even a plant or a fish in the deep see it can seem to be fiction … it’s all true and organic forms on earth make my mind get high.

Usually your images are full of animals, mainly snakes, monkeys, lyons, Elefants... Ancient tribes often attributed mystical powers to those animals. What do they mean in your works?

Animals are usually manifested in my work to represent entities, beings in constant way of spiritual evolution, like keys, representation for certain powers. My father used to say that brazilian natives used to dream that they were flying like a bird, or running in the forest like a tiger, just cause the forest and all events in that environment were the constitution of their collective mind repertoires. Even in their daily lives, they used to hunt to get food, so they needed to face animals and deal with their habits and powers. I just want to bring all forces that the image of those animals can create in our minds to remind us of the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos.

In your work there are also human beings, but always dressed with masks. What do they hide? Or... What do they want to show us wearing those masks?

They are a mystery behind amulets, guns and symbols that help them with their spiritual evolution. They manifest the intensity of the center of earth, enigmas from other dimensional civilizations and also messages caught from other galaxies through our sun and at the same time, they see and comprehend what is invisible for our eyes and indecipherable for our minds. They are strong entities, manifestations of nature, warriors. They can read and codify messages from the sun, cause it’s our biggest antenna that brings informations from even the far away cluster galaxies, but right now they are very influenced by messages from Alcion, the bigger star of Pleaides.

So, it looks like you are a fan of tribal masks. Am I right? Have you considered to make a show of masks made and painted by yourself?

People have paid big attention to my interest in African art (masks, graphic elements, sculptures, religious costumes from different regions of this huge and fascinating continent…). But it’s just one of different elements that my mind has researched to create my works. Maybe, in the future I might be interested in creating masks but my focus is on painting right now. I’ve been studying painting from the fifteenth century in Europe.

This Belio issue has the subjetc "Back to the Roots". Your characters look like gods or characters from an ancient tribe. Do you believe there could be a link between your artwork and the ancestors from your country? Are you interested in the origin of your race?

Maybe nature has manifested some ancestral ideas in my mind, but not consciously. My mother’s family is a Brazilian native descendent from the north of Amazonia forest and my father’s family came from Italy. That’s such an example of Brazilian’s miscegenation. And I’m not only interested in the origin of our race but also I like to go even further, for example - last year people from a small / private airplane flew over the Amazon forest and took a picture of a tribe that had never got in contact with white people. They live in the heart of the forest in a place that is very difficult to access. The image shows a native being seen from the sky aiming to hit the airplane with an arrow. So by looking at this image I suddenly thought how mythical an image of an iron and rigid bird flying over their heads accompanied by the sound of a turbine would be to their minds. My mind instantly drew a relation to UFOs for our rational and scientific society. My intuition just tells me all the time that we are not alone.

Sometimes we can find mudras (spiritual gestures in Hinduism and Buddhism) and hands with one eye in your images. What do you want to express by including these religious icons in your works? Do you consider yourself a religious person?

Yes, I’m a very religious person. Not cause I belong to a special doctrine, religion or secret society. I’m religious cause I’m always looking at the universe around myself as a sacred universe.

So let's keep talking about religions and beliefs. It seems that in difficult times (like the actual economical and cultural crisis) people come back to old traditions and beliefs. Do you think that maybe the human race has followed a wrong path in science and technology, going too far, too far from their own origins? How do you see it?

Science and technology are manifestations, spaces for our minds to keep on moving forward on earth, but we cannot be myope enough to let the veil of ignorance cloud our lucidness.

Your images seem to be really psychedelic, which is somehow connected to the religious aspect. Many artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s attempted to illustrate the psychedelic experience. Are you a fan of this generation? In this case, which ones would be the big references for you?

Maybe you will see a psychedelic manifestation behind my codes but it’s not a consequence of any synthetic drug in my creation process. My works reveal my deeper experiences and ideas about this dimension that connect all of us. That’s why I say that each person understands the content of my work judging by each one’s repertoire and experiences. Artists that really inspire me are those from Europe in the fifteenth century like Bosch, Grünewald, Holbein, Memling or Dürer and they belong to another stratus. Maybe I’ve got ideas and messages from Kerouak, Ginsberg or Burroughs somehow in a kind of osmose.

All right! The origin of the psychedelic art is obviously connected with the personal experience that those artists had with psychedelic drugs like LSD, or natural drugs like mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, etc... or through meditation. Have you ever tried any of those natural options?

It’s a really serious subject to talk about and sometimes I ask myself if I should even mention that I take Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) in interviews. So yes, I take ayahuasca in the Santo Daime ritual here in Brazil, not very often now, and I meditate while I work. But it’s really important to distinguish between synthetic and organic substances. If you try whatever you feel called to, it’s just cause it’s your karma. I’d tried different substances, but 100% natural is by far the deepest and most powerful. It can cure humanity from being so stupid.

I absolutely agree with you. Why should I waste my time with something artificial if nature can offer me the same... And i fully understand this is a really serious and personal topic to talk about openly. I have been reading other interviews on the internet. There are many of your ideas and thoughts that fit with what we believe in Belio, to believe in your dreams, life as an experience of remembering your inner-self, the painful process of creativity like an open wound to discover what's inside of us, and how everything is somehow connected. In this sense the power of our minds is something incredible. Where do you think is the limit for our reality? And where do the images that you create belong to?

Kaibalion says that “The ALL is mental”, even in classic philosophy or ancient religions that relate God to the supreme force that moves everything and that is everywhere. Also in a certain point of view reality goes as far as our sensibility can reach, and that’s why Krishnamurti says that intelligence is sensibility, once sensibility is related to vision / perception, I see this roll cake (material world) as the world of convention – most of people believe and accept this world with a veil in front of their eyes - veil of illusions, bureaucracy and limitedness of our school system. And images manifested through my work are reflections of the world that nature manifests in my mind, it’s a program that connects all images that influence me, I’m just an antenna and I try to get as closer to these visions as I can. Images that are showed in my work are not mine, I just mix, melt and boil all images in my mind and then sign (behind). It’s alchemy, for those who understand the meaning of this word. My antenna is 100% ON right now wewewewwwwww.

In your piece "Acorda Agora" we can read "Wake up now! Everything inside here is shaking". Are you diving inside yourself to find the meaning of your existence? Could "art" be considered your personal tool for self-knowledge?

I’m Autoindicado – my mind operates in Universidade Auto-IndicadaporEntidadesLivres,which is a free University for learning and making researches, very far away from our school system’s program. We let our minds work as antennas that syntonize the signals of the cosmos. At UAEL while developing my art I’m aiming to reach different levels of my mind, I’m searching for the deepest and lucid ideas about life on earth, it’s my search for the 4rth dimension, it’s always aiming to learn and evolve. ALWAYS EVOLVE!

Other titles of your works are "Purificação" (Purification), "Na Aurora é Nóis" (At the right time we know what we are), "Visionando" (Visioning), "Porta de três Cantos" (The Door of three corners)... All of them inspire my mind to think really deep thoughts about the essential questions "what are we? Where do we come from? where do we go?"... Would you like to share any answer with us?

Each of us has a galaxy inside, BUILD YOUR OWN SPACESHIP AND BON VOYAGE.

Your work spreads through small formats of paper for galleries and big sizes for walls in the street. Which size do you enjoy more?Right now I’m a researcher in a cave in São Paulo. I’m concentrating, painting in silence and seeing as less people as I can just cause I need to be focused. I’m enjoying and working on linen, big acrylic paintings.And of course, I guess painting in the street is much more fun. How do you combine street works and studio works? 50/50 maybe?

There is an intense focus on the street in the media and market right now, and somehow it gets a big attention in the perception of people’s researches. Who knows me can see that I did only one mural painting this year for example at Navegantes – north area of Porto Alegre City / Brazil, where I’d grown up. But I’ve spent many hours a day on paintings on linen inside my cave here in São Paulo.

I read that street painting is considered a serious crime, severely punished in Brazil. Did you ever have any problem with police?

Yes I did and it’s hard to deal with sometimes. I started to slow down my production on the streets of Porto Alegre just cause I got police guns pointing at my head for 2 times and I believe that it was enough. In that case I was considered a criminal person, but I was just drawing with a marker in a wall on the street. And that’s what I told them the last time “I’m just drawing…” and the cop said that if I say that I was “drawing on the street” again he was going to take me to jail, he was saying that I was a vandal, a pixador in a depreciative way…

It's just curious... But this Belio dedicated to "back to the roots" has a selection of articles about artists who mostly have something concrete in common: their country, Brazil! Why do you think this happened? Is there a really strong traditional sense in brazilian artists?

I just don’t know. I see young talents following primitive waves and breezing on complex compositions and that are also influenced by young contemporary visionaries. It’s hard to define, it’s too new, all brazilians are connected by language and culture, it creates a big spaceship in the 4th dimension. Who gets the spear and light on his hands goes in the front, like entering the virgin jungle, and brothers as warriors behind and on both sides, always forward, evolution is the way.

Maybe it's something hidden under the surface, but there is a certain style that could be defined as "brazilian". Do you think your country is living a creative "golden-age"? Which brazilian artist would you like to mention as your favourite ones?

I’m not going to say any name, but my favorites are those who aim towards EVOLUTION! Those who have stopped in their researches don’t interest me. There are very few artists I really admire, and they know that. Who stops to create to become a commodity doesn’t have any value for me, but I understand that they need to pay bills as all of us, so I respect them all. Brother is brother.

Then tell me about your heroes, your masters...

I work, talk and act in the name of my beloved masters, my father Nilo Novelli – visionary from the desert who told me to follow my own way. My mom Ione – pure love. Jesus – love. Siddh?rtha Gautama – Light. H. P. Blavatsky - she had helped me to find my path. Mestre Irineu Raimundo Serra – vision, love and Santo Daime, he has taught me to aim instead of dreaming. Chico Xavier - he has told us all that WE ARE NOT ALONE and we have to WORK on Earth. Aristoteles – has helped me to reflect about invisible forces, METAPHISYCS. Ramm Ell Zee (my funkiest master, who is far away getting closest to the Philosopher’s Stone of Hip Hop), with his equation I’ve been taught to dominate the language and he has been a source of inspiration to some of my entities. Arthur Bispo do Rosário – he said once “Those who can’t see get drowned.”, this Sir was a REAL VISIONARY. Joseph Campbell – was very important for me to think I should create and face my own myths. Krishnamurti – I found in his words that sensibility is intelligence. Guilherme Pilla – told me to draw and give all I had for that. Emerson Pingarilho – always remembers me to SHARPEN MY KNIFE. Aubrey Beardsley, balance in black and white complex compositions. Gothic masters in painting such Hans Memling, Jean Fouquet, Wittingau’s Master, Dürer, Bosch, Grünewald… - when I study their creation they all say to me to DO IT, GO TO PAINT NOW and be patient. Picasso – master of pure drawing, very connected to his time and axle. In classic music, Vivaldi. Brazilian musicians like Luiz Gonzaga, Vinícius de Moraes and Elomar, also Mariza from Portuguese Fado– they are all my masters. All of them and others help me to construct my PROGRAM, my STRUCTURE, my ARCHITECTURE. And I’m not going to tell about the others just cause I have to keep a part with me for now.

So we can say all of them are your influences somehow. What else influences your work?

STRONG IMAGES! I like to boil all images that influence my mind in MY PROGRAM, so I distillate it all and transmutate that trough my images. And it all happens in the 4rth DIMENSION always guided by FREE ENTITIES. So, transcending images from Hinduism, IMAGES OF WARRIORS from primitive cultures to futuristic Japanese popular culture, primitive and graphic art from the natives of the Amazon forest, natural manifestations in plants, animals like monkeys, tigers and snakes… contrasts, geometry, line, pure and elegant lines, all masters like I just said before, and of course my experiences with images on the internet oracle, physics, the idea that WE ARE NOT ALONE in cosmos and on earth, the sun light, Pleiades (Messier 45), shapes and forms of galaxies, secrets from black holes and the force of the center of the earth.

In the last years your work has earned a big success in magazines and galleries all over the world. How do you feel about that? Would you imagined that 10 years ago?

Yes, but not exactly like that. I’ve architected it all in real time (NOW) cause I’ve woken up for my mission more than 10 years ago. I’ve tried to select the best opportunities to show my thoughts and other people think I’m a snob cause I don’t answer their questions. They just have to understand that I have to work and each interview I answer takes energy from my mind. I decided to answer your questions just cause I liked them, and this will be the last interview I’ll answer for a long time, I just need to disappear for a wile. My mind is telling me that now.

So many young artists are looking for the same: "Success!" but also respect and freedom to live working exclusively on their art. I'm not sure if this is your case actually, but in case it is, i bet it has been a really hard way/work. Which is the secret of “success”? Something you wish someone had advised you in the beginning?

I would switch the word “success” for “mission”. The day I realized that I was on a mission I decided to live by my drawings even if I had to live on misery, I mean misery of money but not for my spirit. And there is no secret for that, it’s just a call from inside. I don’t like to obey and say yes to something that I don’t believe, and that’s it. I can die in misery but as a free man, for me to create paintings and drawings is my way for freedom. In many cases jobs, universities or other big corporations and institutions are just barriers for lucidness.

But this “success” or mission also offered you the chance of visiting different countries like USA, Spain, Japan, etc. Is there any city or sight view which crushed your heart? And what have you achieved with all those travels?

All places and situations I’ve engaged with were very nice. And again, the word “success” brings bad ideas on my mind – mission sounds better, like “success on the mission”, would sound better. If I’ve got space on media somehow it’s cause it’s my mission to reach all those minds who are going to read what I say, like an UFO in your skies - wewewew.

Ok, right, let’s say success is just a consequence of your work. On the other hand, the music label Planet MU has recently released a new work by Jamie Vex'd with your artwork in the cover. How did it happen? What kind of music do you listen to while you are drawing?

Jamie Vex’d sounds just create outer space images on my mind. When I listened to it I thought that it somehow fits very well with my scenarios so I decided to do it, it’s also a good synchronicity, guys in Planet Mu were very kind to me, so I did it for free. And I’m hearing constantly religious humbanda songs, classic music and visionary masters from NY rap to Brazilian godfathers of bossa nova.

The "2012 doomsday prediction" is a present-day cultural meme proposing that cataclysmic and apocalyptic events will occur in the year 2012. Other theories say that during this time, the planet and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation rather than an armageddon, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a newer sociopolitical age for the global community. Which will be your plans until that date? And... After that date? ;)

BUILD YOUR OWN SPACEHIP – EVERYBODY CONNECTED. I WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE LIGHT FROM THE INVISIBLE FORCE COMES TRUE.

Ok! We will name our spaceship BELIO. Thanks a lot for your words and time. See you in the 4th dimension...