Niobe Xandó & Ernesto Neto" exhibition

Gomide&Co and Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel are pleased to present Niobe Xandó & Ernesto Neto. In the exhibition, the fantastical flower paintings of Niobe Xandó (1915-2010) dialogue with the crochet and organic material works of Ernesto Neto (1964). A critical essay by Julia de Souza accompanies the show, which opens on 09.06, from 4pm to 8pm, at Gomide&Co (Alameda Ministro Rocha Azevedo, 1052).

This unprecedented encounter offers the public a unique reading of both artists. Xandó's canvases developed between the 1950s and 1990s and Neto's sensorial works dialogue not only with each other, but also with the modernist house of Flávio de Carvalho. This selection of works shows a spirituality and an enchantment that the artists established in their practices, each one in its own particularity. One finds at every moment a mirroring of the order of nature that reveals a marked desire to metamorphose the world.

From the early 1940s, Xandó investigated the mysticism of fauna and flora when he made works on the skulls of dead monkeys collected during trips to the coast of São Paulo. In later years, his paintings on tree trunks reveal a type of pictorial experimentation that assumes organic residuality as matter and image, paving the way for the Fantastic Flowers series. In his paintings, flowers and plants are presented in agigant proportions, imbued with an explosive organicity. His plants are carnivorous in that they devour rational and scientific organisation. By representing a mutant vegetation of mystical species and amorphous birds, the artist subverts the natural order of things and her plants take on fantasy.

Associated with a "primitivism" of the image, his vocabulary can be seen as the opposite: a reinvention of the natural qualities so sensitive to human experience. In his practice, Neto challenges and expands the vocabulary of sculpture, exploring formal and symbolic connections between different materials, with the force of gravity as a structural element. His works operate as living organisms in constant transformation. Investigating the mutation of elements of nature in other ways, with the use of spices and nuts within the works - turmeric, cumin, ginger, pepper and nuts - the artist understands the organicity of the experience through the use of these materials and an operation that incorporates a "giving of oneself" on the part of the spectator. In this sense, his works require an availability, and the imagery he elaborates is sensitive and shared.

The interlocution between the productions of Xandó and Neto reinforces the exercise of relating the bodies of work of artists from different periods and contexts, but who still dedicated themselves to essential questions, of the order of nature and of that which we hold most intimate: subjectivity and the will to fabulate and to make the human experience something magical.

Opening

Thursday 9 June 2022 from 4 to 8pm

Visit

09.06 - 30.07.2022

Schedule:

Mon. to Fri. from 10am to 7pm

Sat, 10am - 3pm

Gomide&Co

Al. Ministro Rocha Azevedo 1052

Jardim Paulista, São Paulo - SP