OSGEMEOS

O peixe que comia estrelas cadentes

Jul 28 – Sep 16, 2006


Galeria Fortes Vilaça

Galeria Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Brazil of the São Paulo duo osgemeos, following seven years of international recognition. In addition to the radical change in the Vila Madalena neighborhood's urban landscape created by their painting on the gallery's façade, which has been transformed into a giant head, the exhibition consists of a mural painting inside the gallery, a large installation, and a series of new object-paintings.

The transforming vision that osgemeos have of the world runs through all their works, which have in common references to Brazilian popular culture, to the urban context, and to the oneiric universe that they have created. On the ground floor, the painting that covers the walls from floor to ceiling follows the tradition of Latin American murals, exploring narrativity, archetypal figuration, and imaginary landscape. The installation, of a monumental scale, contains a mechanical sculpture, sound, and interactive elements.

The characters with bright yellow faces, a trademark of the duo, appear to be part of an anonymous multitude in the artists' interventions and paintings, but under a more attentive gaze they are – in truth – characters who are carefully differentiated by means of the clothes and accessories that individualize them. osgemeos are virtuoso draftsmen and manage to forge a richness of pattern and colors rarely seen in contemporary art. According to the artists, each detail tells a little of their life experience in the streets of the city and in their "parallel world" and also of their family history. Their brother Arnaldo Pandolfo even collaborated in the installation's construction.

The yellow head painted on the gallery's façade suggests that the visitor will travel through the fantastic universe that inhabits the artists' minds. Among the paintings, O banho do pavão ("The peacock's bath") best expresses this oneiric world which is marked by cultural hybridizations: the urban, the regional, painting, and assemblage coexist in the work. With an emphasis on the artistic act, this exhibition reveals a less known side of the production of osgemeos, who made their entry on the contemporary art circuit in 2005, at Deitch Project in New York.

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