Cristiano Lenhardt works with videos, photographs, prints, sculptures and performances. In each of these practices the artist is dedicated in finding new ways to activate the surfaces of the materials he uses, through the use of patterns, folds or light.

Litomorfose [Lithomorphosis] is a series of three photographs in which the artist appears wearing clothes sculpted from paper. Photocopied based on cross-sections of stones from a book on archaeology, these papers also cover the photograph’s background, thus producing a double effect of camouflaging the clothes and revealing digitally distorted parts of the body.

In Radiadores, six used car radiators are presented in metal frames like paintings. The original geometric pattern is corrupted by the dents and scratches they received during their use, while the glass of the frames lends them brightness and reflections, underscoring their abstract quality.

The investigation is further developed in sculptures of televisions covered with electrical tape. The light emanates from the screens only through gaps cut out by the artist, sometimes presenting the information of a red band crossing the surface (present in TV Totem), sometimes the visual static of the TV set not tuned to any channel (in TV Fiapos). Photocopying, radiators and television sets activate the memory of a past that is both recent and obsolete, and take on new life based on simple and precise gestures.

Cristiano Lenhardt is from Itaara (RS, 1975), and currently lives and works in Recife (PE). His exhibitions most notably include his participation in the show Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil (Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, USA, 2014), in the Rumos program (Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, 2012) and at the 7th Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre, 2009).