Alban Gallery presents the latest show of the renowned São Paulo-born artist Paulo Whitaker
Exhibition opens on June 13th , with visitation until July 13th
The Alban Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Paulo Whitaker - Solavanco, ou entre o cético e o racional e o místico e sensível. It’s the second show of this celebrated artist from São Paulo at the Alban Gallery, this time gathering works – paintings and drawings – that converge to a new artistic approach, different to the works produced in the last few years by Whitaker, who occupies a singular space in the Brazilian contemporary production; well-known internationally, with participations in several biennales and works in many countries. The opening of the exhibition will take place on June 13th, at 7:30pm, and remains open to the public from June 14th to July 13th.
“The paintings presented here substitute the vibration of overlaid and overloaded shapes – characteristic of previous works, carried out between 2010 and the middle of the 2010s – for surfaces with a smaller number of elements, on which the majority of the components is disposed side by side or in juxtaposition.”, reviews the critic José Augusto Ribeiro, master in Art Theory, History and Critic from the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA-USP) and currently senior curator of the Pinacoteca of de São Paulo.
According to Ribeiro, it is common in the works of the current phase of the artist “that the shapes touch each other, subtly connect by the ends. The elements are placed, in this way, in open and direct relation with the others – autonomous and, at the same time, in contact. Almost as if they were reminding us that the production as a whole conducts its march, thus, by the extremities of language, in order to spread itself to the limit, to approach other knowledges, techniques and solutions – of collage, engraving, serigraphy, sculpture.”
Paulo Whitaker, in turn, says that the works of this exhibition attest the unpredictable nature of his work. As he points out, the use of stencils and paper “masks” is marked by an “abrupt insertion” that is reinforced by the characteristics of his creation: “I have always worked on the floor, making paintings that get dirty, become less clean, stained, showing the creative process. Everything the painting went through until it reached a final result is registered in the creation. I have no desire to hide it. Everything is explicit. The use of paper in the making of the masks facilitates this creative exhibition, leading to the unprecise contours of what I intend to highlight”, explains the artist, reminding us that “today I feel very comfortable in revisiting my work of thirty years, working from it, even if with the necessary distance.”
Renowned artist
Famous name of the national contemporary art circuit, Whitaker may be identified, in a way, as a member of the Generation 80 that claimed a return to painting as a response to the conceptualism in vogue then. Though geographically distant from artists such as Beatriz Milhazes, Daniel Senise, Leda Catunda, Luiz Zerbini and others, Whitaker shared the same sense of an almost exclusive vocation for the pictorial practice, understanding painting as a daily craft, worthy as much of dense theoretical articulations as of a work model that required (and still does) rigor and full dedication to this artistic practice.
In his process, Whitaker faces the surface of a canvas as an open plan where shapes, colors and other elements appear as the work develops, without the artist stablishing a previous thought or pragmatically defining a result already thought for the artistic work. In his long trajectory, the artist has been radically faithful to the idea of a work process that has seen, over decades, the emergence of more vibrant colors taking over his canvases, although he has remained faithful to the idea of a making path that is similar to a constant resolution of the “problems” that they present as he paints them in his atelier.
Paulo Whitaker
Born in São Paulo in 1958, the painter and designer Paulo Whitaker graduated in Artistic Education from the Universidade para o Desenvolvimento do Estado de Santa Catarina - Udesc/Santa Catarina, in 1984. Between 1991 and 1992, he was a resident artist in Plug In, in Winnipeg, Canada, in E-Werk Freiburg in Germany and in 1999 in The Banff Centre for the Arts, also in Canada. In the same year, he participated in the exhibition Arte Contemporânea Brasileira sobre Papel at the MAM, in São Paulo.
Throughout his trajectory, Whitaker participated in important international events, like the 3rd Mercosul Biennale, in Porto Alegre; the Montreal/Canada Biennale and the São Paulo International Biennale. In 1993, he was granted the Gunther Prize for Painting of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, , in 1998 at the 6th Victor National Show and the Grand Prize at Santa Catarina Museum of Art.
Recently, Whitaker participated in the exhibitions: 2024- A Maior Metade, with Virgílio Neto, Galeria Index, Brasília; 2022-Uma Mão Lava a Outra, Olhão SP, collab Virgílio Neto, curator Antônio Lee and in the same year Pequenas Pinturas, Auroras SP, curators Ricardo Kugelmans and Pollyana Quintella. In 2021-Setas e Turmalinas, Casa de Cultura do Parque, curator Gisela Domschke.
Paulo Whitaker’s works are part of the collections of important institutions and museums, such as Santa Catarina Museum of Art – MASC, São Paulo Museum of Modern Art - MAM/SP, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, MAC/USP, Paraná Museum of Contemporary Art - MAC/PR, Museum of Brazilian Art of the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation - MAB/Faap, Pinacoteca of São Paulo, among others
Exhibition: Paulo Whitaker - Solavanco, ou entre o cético e o racional e o místico e sensível.
Opening: June 13th 2024, 7:30 pm
Duration: June 14th to July 14th 2024
Hours: Monday to Friday, 10am to 1pm; 2pm to 7pm - Saturday, 10am to 1pm.
Alban Galeria: Rua Senta Pua, 53 - Ondina - Salvador - + 55 71 3241-3509 | 3014-2549
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