"Pinguins" Drawing

ANDRÉ CAMALEÃO

Carlos André Pinto De Sousa, artistically known as André Camaleão, is a contemporary surrealist artist whose work transitions between painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, graphic design, writing, and scenography. Moving between the tangible and the imagined, he explores the animal condition as a symbol, metaphor, and primordial essence, deconstructing the boundary between humanity and nature.

His work presents a visual discourse in which the animal is not merely represented but reclaimed. Through painting and graphic composition, he constructs narratives that transcend the domestication of perception, inviting a reinterpretation of identity and metamorphosis. The animal emerges as a witness and voice, as a specter and remnant, reclaiming space in a world increasingly disconnected from its own nature.

Camaleão does not merely represent; he gives shape to dreams. Everything he imagines, he projects into images that oscillate between instinctive drive and dreamlike abstraction. His creative process is an exercise in symbolic translation, where each stroke and texture are fragments of a universe that is written as much as it is painted.

A self-taught artist, he began his professional journey in graphic design for the Amoreiras Shopping Center and later pursued studies in Equipment Design, Architecture, and Graphic Production & Design at Lusófona University in Lisbon. He then specialized in Graphic Design at LSD and started a master’s degree in Communication Design at FBAUL. In addition to his authorial work, he develops production assistance, art direction assistance, and creative direction for various artistic productions while also dedicating himself to acting.

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Reference Text on His Work

The universe of André Camaleão is inhabited by beings that oscillate between memory and premonition, instinct and artifice. His visual compositions challenge the idea of domestication and celebrate animality as an autonomous force, an ancestral essence that resists symbolic extinction.

His work proposes not just a gaze, but a testimony. Each piece is a pictorial manifesto where dream, matter, and plastic language intertwine in a process of evocation. By giving form to the invisible, Camaleão challenges perception and invites the viewer into a dialogue with what has already been forgotten or has yet to be named.