The Alban Art Gallery presents the show Estrelas flamejantes em manhã de sol by the visual artist Tiago Sant’Ana opening on May 12th at 7pm. This is the first exhibition of the Bahia-born artist at the gallery and gathers more than 20 new works, especially produced for the occasion, highlighting his painting’s language. The critical essay that accompanies the show is written by Marcelo Campos, chief-curator of the MAR – Rio Museum of Art and professor at the UERJ.
The title of the exhibition is inspired in a text of the 1960s by the American writer James Baldwin, in which he makes a comparison between the social mobility of the Afro-descendent men from the diaspora and celestial elements. From this starting point, Tiago Sant’Ana draws a metaphor in which the sky, moon, light and shadow give visibility to a set of works where the black masculinity takes a central position.
The main set of paintings – in acrylic on canvas and watercolor on paper – brings an association between the sun in a position of power and the moon as an allegory to reflect on life and maturing. This image becomes preeminent in works like Sete luas, in which with a distant look, like a dreamer, a man is surrounded by the Earth’s natural satellite in different phases.
"In this exhibition I created a series of images of power. Be it a power of the energetic component of the stars that figure on the canvases themselves, or because the men portrayed have a complexity and a proud posture in face of the audience. They have clear faces, they have tensions and particularitie", comments the artist, whose painting is his most recent research artistic language.
In the more than 2 meter high work that names the exhibition, Sant’Ana brings a man in a suit in front of a sky, dramatized with the use of curtains. The character carries in his hand a gold mask and is barefoot on a tile floor. The work refers to the Renaissance tradition of the so called "full size portrait", however, with a black person – which was not portrayed in a dignified central position until very recently in the western History of Art. It’s twisting these senses and images, filling gaps in the representation or even twisting its sense that the artist’s show takes shape.
The exhibition is part of the artistic project developed by Tiago Sant’Ana throughout his career of working intersecting history and memory. In this specific case, by eternizing close people and from his circle of friends, the artist builds a kind of emotional painting collection, eternizing these faces in the History of Art.
Sant’Ana has acquired national and international relevance; winning prizes such as the Soros Arts Fellowship of the Open Society Foundation and the ZUM Fellowship of the Instituto Moreira Salles. Recently, his works became part of the collection of the Denver Art Museum, in the United States, and the MASP, in São Paulo. Currently, the artist is on different exhibitions, like the The silence of tired tongues at the Framer Framed in Amsterdam and Encruzilhada at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (Bahia Museum of Modern Art), in Salvador.
The artist has already participated in a series of exhibitions in Brazil and in other countries such as the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, like Enciclopédia negra (2021), at Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Rua! (2020) and O Rio dos Navegantes (2019), at Museu de Arte do Rio, Histórias afro-atlânticas (2018), at MASP and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Axé Bahia: The power of art in an afro-Brazilian metropolis (2017), at The Fowler Museum, Negros indícios (2017), at Caixa Cultural São Paulo and Reply All (2016), at the Grosvenor Gallery, UK. His works are also part of the collections of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Museu de Arte do Rio and Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia.
This exhibition is carried out by the Alban Gallery that, with thirty years dedicated to the Brazilian Art, has an annual calendar of around five exhibitions, promoting and showing the artistic production of renowned and emergent artists of the national art scene of different generations, practices and regions of the country.
Estrelas flamejantes em manhã de sol by the visual artist Tiago Sant’Ana Opening: May12th at 7:30pm Hours: May 13th to July 1st 2022 Monday to Friday 10am to 1pm – 2pm to 7pm Saturday 10am to 1pm Where: Alban Galeria – Rua Senta Pua, 53 - Ondina, Salvador – BA Phone: + 55 71 3241-3509 | 3014-2549 alban@albangaleria.com.br www.albangaleria.com.br