Galeria Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present, in gallery 2, an exhibition by the renowned Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, curated by Adriana Varejão. Varejão presents a personal reading of Araki's work, tracing formal and thematic references between her own work and the 32 selected photographs.

The approximation of works which seem so disparate follows three basic tendencies: the grid, the crack, and the arabesque. The tiled grid that determines Varejão's virtual environments is also present in Araki's work in photos made in bathrooms, where opposites such as clean and dirty, geometry and the body, are conjoined. The crack, which the Japanese photographer finds in female genitalia, in photographs of flowers, and even in landscapes, appears in Varejão's work as fissures and incisions applied on the canvas. Finally, the arabesque unites the artists around a baroque sensibility, whether in their fondness for the organic movement of hair, skin, and fabrics, or in the excess of ornaments and tattoos.

Nobuyoshi Araki's work is currently the subject of a large retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. He also participated in the 1996 São Paulo Biennial.