The members of this group have a lot in common. Besides being close friends, they talk with one another on a regular basis, since they all shared the same studio in São Paulo’s Belenzinho District. The choice of this district is significant insofar as it has played an essential role in the city’s history. The process of industrialization that made São Paulo State a hub of manufacturing began there, with glass and textile factories. It was also the location of the historical Vila Maria Zélia, the first worker’s villa in Brazil. The set of houses and the factory that make up the villa were built by Jorge Luis Street, between 1912 in 1916, to hold the Companhia Nacional de Tecidos de Juta [National Jute Fabrics Company] and dwellings for its workers. In 1931, the factory and villa were transferred to the federal government, which converted the industrial park into a prison for the Estado Novo [New State]. Since many political prisoners, including leftist intellectuals, were held there, the prison came to be nicknamed Universidade Maria Zélia [Maria Zélia University]. It is noteworthy how the same district has constituted different faces of the city of São Paulo’s progressivist process: spanning from the beginning of large-scale production, which ushered in a boom of wealth and urban growth, to the detention of political prisoners during a military dictatorship. These paths are linked with trends of the modernist movements, whose agendas included the investigation of mechanics aimed at forming a strong national identity.
It is not by chance, therefore, that the outlook of these artists is focused on the observation and criticism of different characteristics of social development. And there is a reason why they have settled their practice in a region strongly marked by our society’s history. Perhaps the common poetic thread of these five artists is their intense awareness and observation of their surroundings. Some of them investigate and criticize the development of our state through formative characteristics, while others challenge us to look at seemingly insignificant everyday things that turn out to be structurally complex.
The focus on these issues can possibly generate a poetics that is not necessarily articulated around an aesthetic delight, but rather finds the beauty in commonplace, discarded objects that are appropriated and re-signified, and which bear traces of their place of origin. It is perhaps a response to the modernist sterility, a formative element of our identity, which leads their works to deal with filth. But we are not (necessarily) talking about a grimy sort of filth, but rather a clever artifice that is instated atop everyday situations, which can allow us to understand an aspect of the world in another way. A vile act that qualifies or “dis-(re)qualifies” the routine of art or of life.
The members of this group have a lot in common. Besides being close friends, they talk with one another on a regular basis, since they all shared the same studio in São Paulo’s Belenzinho District. The choice of this district is significant insofar as it has played an essential role in the city’s history. The process of industrialization that made São Paulo State a hub of manufacturing began there, with glass and textile factories. It was also the location of the historical Vila Maria Zélia, the first worker’s villa in Brazil. The set of houses and the factory that make up the villa were built by Jorge Luis Street, between 1912 in 1916, to hold the Companhia Nacional de Tecidos de Juta [National Jute Fabrics Company] and dwellings for its workers. In 1931, the factory and villa were transferred to the federal government, which converted the industrial park into a prison for the Estado Novo [New State]. Since many political prisoners, including leftist intellectuals, were held there, the prison came to be nicknamed Universidade Maria Zélia [Maria Zélia University]. It is noteworthy how the same district has constituted different faces of the city of São Paulo’s progressivist process: spanning from the beginning of large-scale production, which ushered in a boom of wealth and urban growth, to the detention of political prisoners during a military dictatorship. These paths are linked with trends of the modernist movements, whose agendas included the investigation of mechanics aimed at forming a strong national identity.
It is not by chance, therefore, that the outlook of these artists is focused on the observation and criticism of different characteristics of social development. And there is a reason why they have settled their practice in a region strongly marked by our society’s history. Perhaps the common poetic thread of these five artists is their intense awareness and observation of their surroundings. Some of them investigate and criticize the development of our state through formative characteristics, while others challenge us to look at seemingly insignificant everyday things that turn out to be structurally complex.
The focus on these issues can possibly generate a poetics that is not necessarily articulated around an aesthetic delight, but rather finds the beauty in commonplace, discarded objects that are appropriated and re-signified, and which bear traces of their place of origin. It is perhaps a response to the modernist sterility, a formative element of our identity, which leads their works to deal with filth. But we are not (necessarily) talking about a grimy sort of filth, but rather a clever artifice that is instated atop everyday situations, which can allow us to understand an aspect of the world in another way. A vile act that qualifies or “dis-(re)qualifies” the routine of art or of life.
Variable dimentions
Paint, fabric and wood
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimentions
Lamp and sand
Photo Edouard Fraipont140 x 115 x 66 cm
Textile cluster blanket, hammer, crowbar and American camouflaged
Photo Edouard Fraipont35 x 21 cm
Lead and wire
Photo Edouard Fraipont14 x 64 x 4 cm
Ceiling lamp and fixed dust
Photo Edouard Fraipont14 x 64 x 4 cm
A4 bond paper, tape, glue, pillar fan and acrylic painting on wall
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimentions
Interwoven rubber floor
Photo Edouard Fraipont152 x 300 x 26 cm
Woods, sticks, iron, aluminum and brass
Photo Edouard Fraipont96 x 97 x 32 cm
Intervention in cardboard book sleeves
Photo Edouard Fraipont300 x 150 x 150 cm
Photo Edouard Fraipont54 x 43 cm
Photo paper print, foamboard and screens
Photo Edouard Fraipont54 x 32 cm
Print on photo paper, foamboard and mesh
Photo Edouard Fraipont240 x 110 x 2 cm
Textile cluster blankets, steel cable and extenders
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimensions
Pen on wall
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimentions
Acrylic on paper and two tree branches
Photo Edouard Fraipont100 x 52 x 55 cm
Bucket, motor, pigmented water and wood
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimentions
Crochet on frame
Photo Edouard Fraipont120 x 1298 x 12 cm
Spear for wall in galvanized steel plates
Photo Edouard Fraipont30 x 43 cm
Photo Edouard Fraipont165 x 163 x 3,5 cm
Knit dress and plastic cover
Photo Edouard Fraipont115 x 220 x 2,5 cm
Stitched patchwork and plastic cover
Photo Edouard FraipontIn Banco Brasília [Brasília Bench/Bank] (2015), Marcelo cidade proposes an iconoclastic articulation around the Brazilian modernist promise and the powers that be, through a composition that uses clean dinner plates and empty beer bottles to emulate the building of the national congress.
90 x 200 x 50 cm
Bench in concrete, 2 bottles of beet and two porcelain plates
Photo Edouard FraipontIn Banco Brasília [Brasília Bench/Bank] (2015), Marcelo cidade proposes an iconoclastic articulation around the Brazilian modernist promise and the powers that be, through a composition that uses clean dinner plates and empty beer bottles to emulate the building of the national congress.
36 x 57 x 68 cm
Wooden sticks and metal basket
Photo Edouard Fraipont270 x 320 cm
Mineral pigment ink on canvas and enamel ink
Photo Edouard Fraipont120 x 137 cm (each) - diptych
Digital printing on fabric
Photo Edouard Fraipont76,5 x 223 x 4 cm
Cement, books and notebooks
Photo Edouard FraipontIn For GB, Lia Chaia pays homage to Geraldo de Barros using a simple device, made of plastic straws and threads. The artist’s hands appear manipulating the advancing contraption, gaining shapes and colors that make reference to the geometric compositions made by Barros from images of the city, his approach to the new figuration with the Rex Group – when his works gain colors and are built from simple modulations that allow uncomplicated reproduction – and from his experience with playfulness at Unilabor, which he founded with Frei João Batista and which maintained a children’s art school and a furniture manufacturing cooperative.
Gabriel Zimbardi, 2017
8'55''
Video, color and sound
Photo Video stillIn For GB, Lia Chaia pays homage to Geraldo de Barros using a simple device, made of plastic straws and threads. The artist’s hands appear manipulating the advancing contraption, gaining shapes and colors that make reference to the geometric compositions made by Barros from images of the city, his approach to the new figuration with the Rex Group – when his works gain colors and are built from simple modulations that allow uncomplicated reproduction – and from his experience with playfulness at Unilabor, which he founded with Frei João Batista and which maintained a children’s art school and a furniture manufacturing cooperative.
Gabriel Zimbardi, 2017
Variable dimentions
Anodised aluminum
Photo Edouard FraipontVariable dimentions
Anodised aluminum
Photo Edouard Fraipont