(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Two years ago, Luiz d’Orey started ripping off the posters he found hanging in the streets of New York and bringing them home. Far from being a rebel without a cause, the artist used the wheat-paste banners as main material for his latest paintings, which can be seen at Mercedes Viegas Arte Contemporânea starting today, August 16th, at 7 p.m..
Titled “quase plano” (“almost plain”) and curated by Nominating Committee 2016 member Guilherme Gutman, d’Orey’s first solo show mixes creative intent and pure chance in its choice to use found material in all of its 15 paintings. “One of the things that interest me the most in this system are the limits bound by the availability of the material, which naturally pose pictorial matters to be resolved”, explains the artist, who’s only 24 years-old.
Beyond the aesthetics realm, using a material so deeply related to the urban culture also adds a political tone to the work. “The most striking thing is that what I use as basic material was produced with other intentions, like advertising a gig, or promoting a brand,” reflects d’Orey. In a video depicting the process behind the creation of the “quase plano” series, the painter describes how he started to incorporate the anti-Donald Trump posters that started to multiply after the Presidential Elections last year in his work: “I had the idea to superimpose Trump Tower’s architecture over those banners.”
When the paintings are done, they come back to the streets in the form of wheat-paste posters – which, after a few days of exposure, are again collected by d’Orey, being used as basis for new artworks, in a never-ending movement similar only to that of the great cities. Meet some of the works by Luiz d’Orey displayed at “quase plano” below:
“quase plano” [“almost plain”], solo show by Luiz d’Orey
Curated by Guilherme Gutman
On view from August 17th through September 30th, 2017
Opening: Wednesday, August 16th, 7 p.m.
Mercedes Viegas Arte Contemporânea
Rua João Borges, 86 – Gávea
Working hours: mon – fri, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; sat, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
T: (+55 21) 2294-4305