André Mendes Lula Ricardi Marcelo Solá

from march 8 to june 29, 2020

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Summary

Concept 3

The Artists 5

André Mendes 5

Lula Ricardi 13

Marcelo Solá 22

The Gallery 28

General Information 29

Photos 30

Acknowledgments 31

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Concept

A space is only real after we recognize it. During this process we are confronted with factors that in abstract ways, give it life. Thoughts, expressions, feelings and objects, merge to create what we interpret as a private or public space, becoming real after conviviality emerges. The space likewise becomes historical, through the accumulation of events, carrying with the weight of a place that records the details of our coexistence.

André Mendes exemplifies how contemporary art provokes a serious debate about our own history, and demystifies the visual sensations that we have accumulated throughout centuries. His artworks were created inside an ancient Parisian cloister from the

XIVth Century but he used ecological contemporary material. Photo maquette André Mendes

Lula Ricardi presents his minimalistic artworks using architecture as the basis for his creations. Architecture is one of his strongest supports. Behind his architect's eye there is always a critical observation of our political status. According to Divino Sobral the artist is “moved by restlessness and the need to displace his field of work and his means of expression. He does not consider himself a photographer, facing photography as another visual resource that he can apply to his work to establish a dialogue to the world.”

Marcelo Solá developed a long research on architecture and culture of Brazilian black ancient communities, their habitat and their way of living. The artist interpreted the architecture of their villages as part of their own identities. “Marcelo Solá assumes he pulverized the nature of modern society as the current, possible order, leaving the “constructions” hung by a thread. It is the image itself, on the verge of failure, a constructive, devastating anti-program. He creates, in addition, a paradox between the will of individuation and the original expression, and, at the same time, the nihilistic conception of the mechanical world, where the forms of “self” got lost.”, says Ligia Canongia.

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to our second collective show, featuring Brazilian artists André Mendes, Lula Ricardi and Marcelo Solá, that together dialogue through different media, materials and concepts to find a unique language through art. Ricardo Fernandes

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Suggested Bibliography for this show: Espace Domestique, B. Collignon + J. F. Staszak, Édition Breal, 2003, France

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The Artists

Photo autoportrait André Mendes

André Mendes

Born in in 1979, André Mendes holds a degree in Graphic Design from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná and a Specialist in Artistic Design by the Institut Superior de Diseño and Escola de la Imatge IDEP in Barcelona, Spain.

After three years in Spain, André held his first individual international exhibition in 2009, in the city of Porto - .

The artist has participated in a great number of national and international exhibitions, including exhibitions at Nasi Campur Gallery, Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand, as well as collective exhibitions in Malaysia and France.

Currently André Mendes lives and works in Curitiba, where his research and production are focused on . The artist is interested in the materiality of color and how its behavior is fluid. Momentum manifests itself in its work and overflows to other surfaces of the surrounding world - sculptural and architectural.

Curriculum Vitae

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André Mendes (born in 1979)

Education

2011

Advanced Painting III – UFPR, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba –

2008

Metal Engraving – Solar do Barão, Curitiba, Brazil

2004

Drawing Expertise – IDEP Image and Design School, Barcelona – Spain

2003

Degree in Graphic Design, PUC – PR, Curitiba – Brazil

Main Solo Shows

2016

Solo Project Art Basel 2016, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery, Basel, Switzerland

2014

Espacial, Open Studio Exhibition, Curitiba, Brazil

Art Expo Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2013

André Mendes Solo, Galeria Zilda Fraletti, Curitiba, Brazil

2012

Falando de Arte, Museu Guido Viaro, Curitiba, Brazil

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2011

Urban Gallery, Brookfield Incorporations, Curitiba, Brazil

COLORES, Galeria Zilda Fraletti, Curitiba, Brazil

2009

Deconstruction, Espaço Cultural BRDE, Curitiba, Brasil

2006

Traços, Porto Esfera, Porto, Portugal

Main Collective Shows

2017 aestival 07, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery at Cloître des Billettes Cultural Center, Paris, France

2016 aestival 06, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery at Cloître des Billettes Cultural Center, Paris, France

Nasi Campur, TAKSU Gallery Singapore, Singapore

+ (Over)Laid, Galeria InterAtividade, Curitiba, Brazil

2015

Total, Farol Galeria, Circuito Bienal Vento Sul, Curitiba, Brazil

Total, Galeria Zilda Fraletti, Circuito Bienal Vento Sul, Curitiba, Brazil

Tropikos, Hof Art Space, Bangkok, Thailand

Limited Edition, Casa Lab, Curitiba, Brazil

2013

Salon of Contemporary Art of Ponta Grossa – First Prize, Brazil

National Salon of Art, Itajaí, Brazil

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Art Expo Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2012

Art Expo Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Elementares, André Mendes and Fernando Franciosi, Contemp. Art Museum of Paraná (MAC PR), Curitiba, Brazil

ColorFlow – André Mendes and Rimon Guimarães, Galeria RAS, Barcelona, Spain

2011

Águas do Amanhã, Museu (MON CT), Curitiba, Brazil

MOB + ART BICYCLE and MOBILITY, Solar do Barão, Curitiba, Brazil

2010

Estado da Arte, 40 years of Contemporary Art in the State of Paraná, Coletivo Interlux Arte Livre, Curitiba, Brazil

Museu Oscar Niemeyer (MON CT), Curitiba, Brazil

Self Portrait, Casa Andrade Muricy, Curitiba, Brazil

2009

V Bienal Vento Sul, Projeto Grade Sobre Grade, Coletivo Interlux Arte Livre, Curitiba, Brazil

SkateArt, SkateRIP, FAD, Barcelona, Spain

IN_VERSOS, Estreita Galeria, Curitiba, Brazil

2008

Cicloviáerea, Cooperation on Jarbas Lopes Project, CCSP, , Brazil

SINTOMAS, Centro Cultural Solar do Barão, Museu da Gravura Cidade de Curitiba, Curitiba, Brazil

Coletivo Interlux Arte Livre, Underground Galleries, Curitiba, Brazil

Art in Circulation – Coletivo Interlux Arte Livre, Caixa Cultural, Curitiba, Brazil

2007

IX Salão Graciosa de Artes Plásticas, Curitiba, Brazil

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MOB – Art Bicycle and Mobility, Centro Cultural São Lourenço, Curitiba, Brazil

2005

VIII Salão Graciosa de Artes Plásticas, First Price, Curitiba, Brazil

2004

Collective IDEP, IDEP Image and Design School, Barcelona, Spain

Art Residencies

2015 Tropikos, Hof Art Space, Bangkok, Thailand

2012 Kakiseni International Art Residency, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2008 Jarbas Lopes Residency, Maricá, RJ, Brazil

Prizes

2013 First Prize at the National Salon of Art, Itajaí, Brazil

2005 First Prize at the VIII Salão Graciosa de Artes Plásticas, Curitiba, Brazil

Main Galleries, Museums and Institutions Collections

GRPCOM Gazeta do Povo News, Curitiba, Brazil

Paraná Institute of Oncology, Curitiba, Brazil

Ricardo Fernandes Gallery, Paris, France

Santa Cruz Hospital, Curitiba, Brazil

Secretary of Culture of Ponta Grossa, Brazil

Zilda Fraletti Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil

Main Private Collections

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Alexander Reish, Dubai, Arab Emirates

Andrew Jong, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Carlos Rebelo Gloguer, Curitiba, Brazil

Consuelo Cornelsen, Curitiba, Brazil

David Silveira Neto, Zagreb, Croatia

Frank Honjo, Curitiba, Brazil

Gal Costa, São Paulo, Brazil

Guilherme Mendes, Singapur

Melinda Looi, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Najat Salameh and Mathieu Sarracanie, Basel, Switzerland

Professor Hyperides Zanello Square, Curitiba, Brazil

Sami Korhonen and Ricardo Fernandes, Paris, France

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Deconstruction 2009

Untitled 08, André Mendes, 2016, Ink on Canson FineArt Paper 125gr, 29.7 cm x 42 cm (11.6 in x 16.5 in)

In a world in which information is constantly crossing boundaries, it is crucial to pay attention to how fast young talented visual artists have been incorporating formal, stylistic and pictorial elements to their work. André Mendes is one such case.

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of his body of work is an unpretentious affirmation of a tradition genuinely born out of a kind of freedom that is almost sarcastic in the way the artist uses his skills as painter and drawer. One needs only to remember André’s many public and private murals in order to grasp his impressive technique. They are executed in both ceramics and new industrial techniques he creates and develops himself. Always aware of the many different kinds of painting styles, specific methods, scenes and tendencies in the art world today, Mendes draws, manipulates and organizes the elements in his works with such ability that it allows him a “deliberate” use of pictorial language, a natural procedure that stands between the commitment to conceptual research and a purely aesthetic experience.

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His gaze skilfully knows and recognizes a great part of the extensive modern pictorial tradition, even provocatively better than many more experienced and renowned artists today. His contact with art from an early age, or maybe the times he has lived abroad in Spain, France and Australia, or maybe even his many trips to different parts of Europe, where he has had the chance to see in person the works of many of his favourite artists, like Tapiés, have most certainly contributed to his education as an artist. Luckily for us, however, despite his great ability with form, Andre is not a lazy artist, he does not settle for what he knows and masters. On the contrary, he is restless, active, apprehensive, all qualities that I think every good artist must have.

In the fight between balancing and letting go, fixing and breaking the limits of the frame, in the position and disposition of colours and shapes, Andrés’s recent work has presented us with a conceptual characteristic that is essential to every artist’s body of work and, the way I see it, it is not only worth appreciating his art and his talent, it also ennobles us, as spectators, his much deserved success.

Tony Camargo

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Lula Ricardi

Photo Henrique Pereira

Born in 1968

Honours Degree in Architecture and Urbanism.

Development of studies in photography, collage, objects, digital prints and drawings.

MAIN SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017 Hotel 66, Photographs and Photobook. Museum of Image and Sound (MIS), São Paulo, Brazil

2015 Despertencimento (Unbelonging), Photographs. Goiânia Museum of Art (MAG), Goiânia, Brazil

2013 Brave New World, Photographs, digital prints and installations. do Sul

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Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Campo Grande, Brazil

MAIN COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS

2019 Terra Brasilis, Dauphine Gallery, Paris, Frace

SÓLOVE, Casa da Imagem, São Paulo, Brazil

2017 Antilogies: photographics in the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

New Political Art, Lauro Campos Foundation, São Paulo, Brazil

On Men and Mice, Aura Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil

Sorrowful Tropics, Mezanino Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil

2015 Paraty in Foco, Paraty, Brazil

2013 Desvenda Art Fair, Signs of Primitive Art Photograph Nº 2, São Paulo, Brazil

2010 Nuvem Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil

MAIN PRIZES

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2018 Honorable Mention at SESC Contemporary Art Biennial with the artwork Esquemas Burocráticos, Brasília / DF, Brazil

2016 Prize for Best Photograph at the 4th Autumn Show of Latin America: Memorial of Latin America (SOAL), São Paulo, Brazil

2015 15th Marc Ferrez Funarte Photography Prize: Documentary and Photobook Project: Hotel 66

Honorable Mention at 4th Master Luiz de França Photography Contest, Ex Orixás Photography – Museu da Abolição (Abolition Museum), , Brazil

2014 Acquisition Prize at Art Exhibition of , 2014 edition, with the project Bureaucratic Schemes

2013 Acquisition Prize: Temporary Exhibitions – Brave New World Exhibition, Mato Grosso do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Campo Grande, Brazil

Finalist in the 4th Edition of the RM Ibero-American Photobook Contest with the art book “The Flesh Which Serves Us", Mexico City, Mexico

MAIN ART SALONS

2018 Sesc Contemporary Art Biennial, Brasília / DF, Brazil

2017 8th Itinerary Exhibition Artists Without Galleries, São Paulo, , Goiânia, and , Brazil

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42nd Salão de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (SARP), Rupture and Blockage, Photographs at Ribeirão Preto Art Museum (MARP), Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

2016 48th SAC - Piracaba Exhibition of Contemporary Art – Post-capitalism, Photographs – Pinacoteca Municipal “Miguel Dutra” Art Museum, Piracicaba, Brazil

44th Luiz Sacilotto Contemporary Art Exhibition – Rupture and Blockage Photographs, Santo André, Brazil

4th SOAL – Autumn Show of Latin America: Memorial of Latin America, São Paulo, Brazil

2015 47th SAC - Piracaba Exhibition of Contemporary Art – Bureaucratic Schemes

Objects, Miguel Dutra, Municipal Pinacoteca Art Museum, Piracicaba, Brazil

14th Modern Art Exhibition – Despertencimento (Unbelonging) Photographs, Municipal Centre for Education, Piracicaba, Brazil

2014 Mato Grosso do Sul Art Exhibition - 2014 edition, Bureaucratic Schemes, Objects, Mato Grosso do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Campo Grande, Brazil

Londrina Art 3, Unbelonging, Photographs - DAP – Division of the House of Culture / UEL, , Brazil

39th SARP – Ribeirão Preto Art Exhibition – Despertencimento (Unbelonging), Photographs, Ribeirão Preto Art Museum (MARP), Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

2013 Mato Grosso do Sul Art Exhibition – 2013 edition – Photographs: “Why I can perceive you visually yet not see you, Mato Grosso do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Campo Grande, Brazil

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12th Jataí Art Exhibition – Photographs: Dream Study I and II, Jataí Contemporary Art Museum, Jataí, Brazil

COLLECTIONS

2019 Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), series Gas Station, Paris, France

2017 Art Museum: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Four photographs in the Project HOTEL 66, São Paulo, Brazil

2014 Mato Grosso do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Object NO, from the Bureaucratic Schemes series, Campo Grande, Brazil

2013 Mato Grosso do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), Untitled, photograph from the Brave New World series, Campo Grande, Brazil

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Sinal Rupestre N. 2, Lula Ricardi, 2013, 80 cm x 120 cm, 31.4 in x 47.2 in

The production of Lula Ricardi transits between several media and supports, investing in the research of various languages (stamp, object, installation and collage), yet it is with the exercise of photography that it reaches the most powerful and poetic results. Moved by restlessness and the need to displace his field of work and his means of expression, the artist does not consider himself a photographer, facing photography as another visual resource that he can apply to his work to establish a dialogue to the world. However, his photographic production has grown and increased over the last four years, with the development of different series which were dedicated to investigating specific plastic and conceptual issues: the action and the human marks on space, the ruins caused by time, the relations between body and place - the body and the flesh, the awakening and the solitude.

Now with Hotel 66, Lula Ricardi puts photography at the center of his research, deepening his gaze, assuming a rigorous work methodology and producing images of intense plasticity and conceptual interest. Facing photography as a platform that allows him to perceive, to relate and to interpret the world, Ricardi combines the aesthetic concern with the documentary record, and thus, integrates himself to the expressive segment of contemporary production, which operates

18 by redefining the conceptual contours of this category of photography. What he presents are images whose documentary aspects attest to the poetic subject of historical character, they are records of almost marginal places, made to be seen at night, chosen amid the chaos of the “paulista“ urban landscape.

The photographs that compose the Hotel 66 project are a record of spaces, which although public – are practically hidden during the day, lost in the heterogeneous sets of buildings of São Paulo. Taken during the night, the images concentrate on small hotel establishments, which remain mainly in places of more deterioration and disregard by the public power. The focus is on “anonymous” hotels that do not have trading names written on their modest facades, but only the word hotel to designate the function. Without identity, these hotels possibly cheat the rules of a formal economy by offering - at a lower price - basic services to low-income people, who use them as a temporary residence, a simple overnight stay or a cheap sex accommodation, since some of them serve this purpose exclusively.

They are hotels, which for some reasons, live in invisibility: their facades are lost in the confusion of information in which they coexist, within a dispute for space in the streets; devoid of identity, they are not listed in hotel catalogs or tourism sites; they serve the public that integrate the invisible layers of the population, the mass of people with no voice and whose identities are always at risk.

Hidden during the day, these are nocturnal dynamic hotels, which only appear when night allows - in the darkness, when the magic of lights comes into action - and when from the shadows, myriads of types of people, anonymous and marginalized, arise: workers exhausted from fatigue, newly arrived travelers, drunks and addicts, sellers and consumers of sex - all desiring a room with a bed. They are characters who are absent from the photographs, but arise when someone inquires about the use of those Non-Places. The presence of the customers is rare in the whole, but it can be perceived by means of a few signs: parked cars, a few open windows, other windows lit by television sets, a bathroom light and a few people at the reception.

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A hotel is a type of human accommodation that integrates the category of a Non-Place, defined by Marc Augé (1992) as the construction of a physical and social space in which no one is part of does not have the feeling of belonging or the appearance of affective bonds to it; it is only a place of circulation, of impermanence, of solitude and of anonymity. With their lack of identities, these inexpensive accommodations, destined for quick passages or sensual adventures, are spaces of intense traffic and impersonal relationships.

The facades, especially the entrances (which are sometimes the only forms of contact between the hotel and the street, the link between the visible exterior and the imagined interior), are usually photographed with a frontal frame, with occurrences of slight variations in the angle of the point of view. The darkness of the night, at the same time, contrasts with the lighting and values the dubious taste in communication resources and decoration - employed by these establishments so that they become visible. The set of images shows that there is a kind of visual code for this popular hotel accommodation to stand out in the urban landscape and to communicate with the social group to which it provides service.

A cheesy pattern, which results in visual compositions of intense plasticity, when recorded by the look of Ricardi. At Hotel 66, the night sky intensifies the visual power of the luminous signs, the contours and the applications of neon wires and colored lamps - recurring elements in the facades. The radiant luminosity reveals some elements of the architecture: the low-cost covering and finishing materials, either the walls painted with bright colors or dirty and pecked, the narrow and somber staircases and the receptions decorated with from a street market. Everything contributes to the creation of a tense atmosphere in the situation, as if, almost in contradiction, these places were destined to be a temporary shelter but also contained dangers and latent secrets. Using light and shade, Lula Ricardi creates a metaphor for the existence of the photographic image; the passing of one to the other makes the fundamental subject and the subject of his work.

The editing procedures adopted in the book result in rich dialogues between the images, through the sequence in which they are organized and the pairings that highlight similarities between the architectural elements, the choice of colors, the lighting patterns, the sign insertion locations and

20 even the frameworks adopted by the artist. The presentation of Hotel 66 in a book format is a way found by Lula Ricardi to catalog these anonymous establishments, a way to give visibility to what had previously remained hidden. In the end, it raises a capital question: of everything that there is in the world, what are the percentages of what we see, of what we want to see and of what they let us see?

Divino Sobral

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Marcelo Solá

Photo Paulo Dourado

Marcelo Solá was born in Goiânia, Brazil in 1971

The territory of Solá’s work is an expanded drawing beyond its habitual semantic coordinates. It ́s origin and destiny. With an invasion of size, scale, support and space, calligraphy becoming drawing and vice-versa, he interchanges the graphic signs and free space where it is made, often a huge piece of paper (almost like a poster) and in a state of installation.

All his profuse activity usually transpires on all sides a personal and contextual questioning, since that, like in a seismography that at the same time is invasive and malleable, mutant and metaphorical, it dialogues with gaps, empty spaces and rough, dirty, scratched representations (with a hint of street graffiti ), freely and almost chaotically connected , as if there was a heteronomy between reality and origins, contracting into the aesthetical questioning of a journal, a stained biography, invaded by that which it registers. His Caderno de Viagem, Nova York (Traveling notebook, New York) (2007), for instance, lives from this open, multiple, 3 polyphonic tension. His large-size drawings (always allied to several techniques), also present her, keep the same biographical trend.

Text by Adolfo Montejo Navas for the exhibition Heteronomy Brazil, Casa de America Museum.

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May/September, Madrid 2008

Main Individual Exhibitions

2019 Ricardo Fernandes Gallery, Paris, France

2017 Goiânia Art Museum (MAG), Goiânia, Brazil Orlando Lemos Gallery, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Karla Osório Gallery, Brasília, Brazil

2015 Luciana Caravello Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2014 Karla Osório Gallery, Brasília, Brazil

2010 Goiás Contemporary Art Museum (MAC Goiás), Goiânia, Brazil Oscar Niemeyer Cultural Center, Goiânia, Brazil Casa de Cultura Laura Alvin Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2009 Novaartenova, Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (CCBB), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Novaartenova, Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (CCBB), São Paulo, Brazil Virgilio Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil Aloísio Magalhães Modern Art Museum (MAMAM), Recife, Brazil

2005 National Art Foundation – Funarte, Brasília, Brazil

1999 Casa Triângulo Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil

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1997 Fine Arts National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil São Paulo Cultural Center, São Paulo, Brazil

Main Collective Exhibitions

2018 aestival 2018, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery at Centre Culturel Cloître des Billettes, Paris, France

2017 Luciana Caravello Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2016 O Útero do Mundo (The Womb of the World), Modern Art Museum of São Paulo (MAM), São Paulo, Brazil 2013 Blind Field, Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, USA

2009 Heteronímia, Casa de América Museum, Madrid, Spain

2006 10+1: Os Anos Recentes da Arte Brasileira (Recent Years of Brazilian Art), Tomie Ohtake Institute, São Paulo, Brazil

2004 New Acquisitions of Gilberto Chateaubriand’s Art Collection, Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro (MAM RIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2002 25º São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil

2001 Drawing Center, New York, USA

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1999 Panorama of Contemporary Brazilian Art on Paper, Modern Art Museum of São Paulo (MAM SP), São Paulo, Brazil

1998 XVI Fine Art National Salon, Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Brasília Visual Arts Prize, Brasília Art Museum, Brazil

Main Prizes

1998 Brasília Visual Arts Prize, Brasília Art Museum, Brazil 1992 II Biennial Arts Prize of Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil

Main Museums, Institutions and Galleries Collections

Gilberto Chateaubriant Collection, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Figueiredo Ferraz Institute, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil Casa Triângulo Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil Luciana Caravello Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Rio Art Museum (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Aloísio Magalhães Modern Art Museum (MAMAM), Recife, Brazil São Paulo Modern Art Museum, São Paulo, Brazil Main Private Collections Fernanda Montenegro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Sérgio Carvalho, Brasília, Brazil Museum Catalogues Goiás Contemporary Art Museum 2014 (English + Português Brasileiro) Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Goiás 2014 Goiás Contemporary Art Museum 2017 (English + Português Brasileiro) Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Goiás 2017

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Marcelo Solá – Love and Aggressivity

Untitled 22, Marcelo Solá, Drawing on paper, 80 cm x 100 cm (31.4 in x 39.3 in)

For years black on white, stronger, more incisive, was the claw of Marcelo Solá. The pencil, pen, brush, pastels, charcoal - a variety of instruments which immediately show its respect for the intrinsic quality of each of them - invariably attacked the white surface of the paper or the wall, with black - but Marcelo Solá action has never been reduced to a classic arena of drawing, the sheet of paper to cross with sharp figures, sharp lines to stain it by making scribbles. Regular features obsessively made and with a negligence calibrated, to the point of becoming squeaky, to weave into the incomprehensible; to suffocate it under thick layers of black, like skins that are superimposed on each other, making it partially mute, even to delimit only a small portion, a minimal region of the white quadrilateral which became resplendent as an authentic conquest.

Drawing is a bit like appropriating, taking possession. We throw our ideas on the paper, we draw in the sand, we engrave our names on the trees and in the stone, pushed by the atavistic desire to be permanently away from our own bodies. Marcelo Solá appropriates this ancestral impulse and updates it. What he does using the equivalence of gestures and an aggressive understanding, the fact that the written words and sentences, the silhouettes outlined through the contour lines, the ornamental serrations, the structures that announce

26 volumes in the three-dimensional space. All this belongs to the atmosphere of the drawing, with the graphic gesture, with the practice of an exercise to the invention of which we owe our own invention. Drawing is an action that has two kinds of roots: on the one hand it has aspects of the visible, on the other hand it involves throwing our ideas on the support, projecting them, making them take shape, materialize and bring them to light. By changing the opposition of black against white, which is so dear to him; Marcelo Solá amplified his conquest by introducing colors until reaching this new and surprising series in which he insists almost exclusively on the black, on a field in which the light stops; by which it is swallowed. In which clarity is blocked by the mystery of darkness, and suddenly the luminous blades and coloured planes of his drawings emerge. A profusion of fluorescent colours on paper and also in that and well beyond. Juxtaposed, intercalated, although sometimes there are some interpenetrations and even superimpositions of the patterns with which they seem to adjust by filling the spaces in the dark. There are architectural forms, some crisp; others all entangled, which are sent to the bottom, opening new perspectives on the dark plane; there are silhouettes and doodles, retractile outlines that shrink or blossom into reverberations similar to those emerging from the lakes, there are words and numbers, variable phrases, dates and places, which lead to mental and temporal spaces by sliding us towards other sensations, as is common in the written language; finally, there is the space of colours in flat, the expansiveness of the red and yellow, the iridescence of the walleye, the retraction of the blue and violet, invading the space which separates our eyes from the sheet of paper or attracting us within the latter. All this is always very aggressive and very sordid, but also, always full of tenderness.

Agnaldo Farias Art Curator

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The Gallery

Inaugurated in Paris in May 2010, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery seeks to present contemporary art to the European market. It is a continuation of a project of over twenty years, which began with the opening of his first gallery in Brazil and an international career in which Ricardo Fernandes is actively involved in promoting his artists. Located in the Marais district, he operates in an extremely dynamic and resolutely cosmopolitan environment that reinforces its international and artistic values.

It hosts a selection of forms of visual arts (painting, , photography, installations ...) and opens up to a wide variety of contemporary artistic expressions.

With its constant support to Latin American and international artists and its involvement in the development of a regional market in full expansion, Ricardo Fernandes Gallery participates in the diversity, artistic and cultural interaction in the city of Paris.

Photos: Solo show Amilcar de Castro, Paris, 2015, curator Ricardo Fernandes, photos SK

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General Information

Title André Mendes, Lula Ricardi, Marcelo Solá Artists André Mendes, Lula Ricardi, Marcelo Solá Description Contemporary art exhibition at Ricardo Fernandes Gallery, Paris, France

Curator Ricardo Fernandes Scenography Ricardo Fernandes

Opening March 7, 2020 (from 2pm to 6pm)

Exhibition From March 7 to June 29, 2020 The last exhibition day (April 6, 2020) was postponed to June 29 due to Covid19 crisis.

Hours Daily from 10 am to 6 pm (please kindly check out our timetable at our website or contact us for confirmation due to Covid19 crisis)

Address Ricardo Fernandes 132 - 140 rue des Rosiers Marché Dauphine (galerie 95) 93400 Saint Ouen France Metro: M4 or M13 Bus: 86 Parking: Malassis

Information www.ricardofernandes.biz Email [email protected] WhatsApp / Tel + 33 6 81 35 12 87

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Photos

For more information and photos in high definition for the press, please contact us: [email protected]

All images are copyright protected and have their reproduction prohibited.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all those who helped to make this show possible even during this world sanitarian crisis in 2020.

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