electric dreams

Victor Arruda

Victor Arruda is one of the great figures of the Geração 80 in Brazil, who has experimented with painting since the end of the 1970s, beginning during the country's military dictatorship. With images that recall the visual culture of comic strips, Arruda's works present several narratives guided by sexuality, humor, and everyday life in a chaotic and inequitable city like Rio de Janeiro. His paintings illustrate ephemeral encounters, abusive relationships and different understandings of the human body. The works exhibited in this show are all new and emerge from a recent series through which the artist reflects on his own trajectory, all while maintaining his characteristic segmentation of space and narration, as well as his distinctive use of color and depiction of body parts that mirror and repeat themselves throughout different parts of the canvas.

Thiago Barbalho

Thiago Barbalho's work is centered around color. The artist notably creates accumulations of images characterized by strong and often clashing colors, which imitate the shape of small objects and situations, colorful eyes and geometric shapes, all of which agglomerate and do note concede any space to each other. Interestingly, the amalgamation of visual information clashes to such an extent that, from afar, it creates a harmonious composition. One's eyes can rest on the works for a lifetime without ever running out of new details to discover. In addition to a large scale drawing, the exhibition also presents a series of small drawings produced during a trip to the Peruvian Amazon, in an encounter with the Shipibo-Conibo people.

Cristina Canale

Since her first exhibitions in the 1980s, Cristina Canale has experimented with the language of painting. Having first explored the large scale, the artist subsequently worked with an array of sizes, all of which coincide in Canale's ability to create images that occupy a liminal space between abstraction and figuration. The artist uses color to delineate and fill in clothing patterns in her compositions, as well as landscapes, yet her compositions are always imbued with an imitative sense. The work shown in this exhibition is Lacrima Christie dated 1989; it is part of a series of paintings, which the artist produced at a time where she responded to—both in her colors and formats—the certain conceptions of landscape painting.

Virgílio Neto

Virgílio Neto has experimented with drawing since the beginning of his career, creating juxtapositions and summations of visual and textual elements. In his work, the artist makes use of different formats - from unique pieces fragmented into numerous paper sheets, to drawings placed directly onto the floor. His particular investigations emerge through the details in his works —sentences in English and Portuguese, short references to the history of art and a wide array of textures, that are only achievable with a high command of pencils and watercolors. One's gaze is thus invited to roam through the clouds of images, to access one's own personal inventory of images and objects, and to continue the narratives suggested by the artist.

Renato Pera

Renato Pera has recently developed an interest in images of the absurd. The artist evokes imaginary pop, citing horror films through the use of techniques such as digital manipulation, video and photography. Uninterested in offering a documentative gaze of the world, Pera prefers exploring the artificiality of imagery. In this extensive series of drawings, he created images that engage with an ample imaginativeness around the idea of the bacteria - the body of work consists of 80 color images, which call for the public to observe its different forms, colors and sizes, as if the audience were in a fictitious microbiology laboratory. At this historic moment in time, still plagued by a pandemic, the images address a relationship with science that is characterized by obsession, hope and delirium.

Maya Weishof

Maya Weishof's practice revolves around the relationship between the human body, painting, color and excess. In using an ample scale of colors, the artist is able to create images of bodies—often female—in different torsions, illustrating positions that blur between violence and sensuality. Weishof's works engage with the visual tradition of classical frescoes, often consisting of a major and central scene, surrounded by other small and parallel narratives. Her distinctive use of color imbues the conjunction of visual information, confusing the spectator's gaze and, like that of other artists in the exhibition, calling for a long process of contemplation.