Galeria Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present Handmade by Efrain Almeida. The show features two installations and three wooden sculptures, with details in pyrography and oil paint.

The exhibition’s title emphasizes the manual process of making the artworks and the singularity arising from this process. The small-scale artworks are installed on the floor and walls of the Galpão, in counterpoint to the monumental size of the exhibition space. This confrontation of scales proposes relations of complicity, approximation and intimacy with the spectator.

Olhos [Eyes] is an installation made up of thirty pairs of sculpted eyes aligned side to side. The body, which has always been present in Efrain’s work, seems to be absent now, or at least hidden behind the walls. These eyes that gaze at the spectator have no recognizable color, gender or age. They activate an infinity of narratives that reverberate throughout the exhibition.

Mariposas [Butterflies] consists of fifty pieces forming an organic splotch on the wall. The butterflies that inhabit Efrain’s imaginary are often imbued with a symbolic meaning with references to religion and literature, but also to past and present everyday experiences. Thus, the trip to Japan that inspired the butterflies is overlaid to the backyard of his childhood in the arid scrub-forest region of Ceará State. The sculptures Quintal [Backyard], Carneirinho [Little Sheep], Pretinha [Little Blackie] explore the characteristics of the animals from there, while eschewing realistic depiction. The skins, the thin structure of the bodies, the physiognomic features of these sculptures recall the characters of fairy tales.

The artist will participate in the upcoming 29th Bienal de São Paulo, in September of this year. A book about his oeuvre will also be released by Editora Cobogó publishers, of Rio de Janeiro.