Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is pleased to present Twilight Zone, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha’s most recent solo exhibition at the gallery. The artist shows an original set of paintings in which he explores the repetition of twilight scenes by experimenting with a wide range of design resources. The show’s title is loosely inspired by memorable North-American TV series Twilight Zone, whose dystopian tinted plot became a cult hit in the 1950s.
The artist reaffirms his obsession with gesture in these new piece, while investigating the use of an assortment of equipments in his painting process, among which are palette knives, brushes of various sizes and shapes and his own hand. They’re compositions which build up from a focal point at the center of the canvas and grow in a process that includes improvisation, flaw and chance. Hence, Carneiro da Cunha designs coastal sceneries in which people interact with the sun and the moon. These too, like characters, are endowed with human qualities and emotions. If twilight happens when the sky is painted by a host of lights and hues, the artist seeks to replicate this gradient effect by manipulating the paint in round strokes within the canvas area. Such manipulation allows him to balance the various levels of saturation and contrast in these compositions, confering apocaliptical nuances to the scenes.
Employing a very dry humor – a trademark of his work – the artist creates hybrid figures who seem to suffer or collapse under a sort of final judgement conducted by the stars, moral actors in this narrative. The interest on cartoon language becomes evident in pieces such as Luar e Zumbi and Destroyer, in which the artist uses charicature as a powerful visual translation tool of a particular fantastic or absurd situation – scenes that don’t seem so unreal these days.
Last June, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha has been the inspiration and pivoting point of the group show A Burrice dos Homens, curated by Fernanda Brenner, at Galeria Bergamin & Gomide, in São Paulo. On September 5th, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel hosts a debate with Carneiro da Cunha and artist Jac Leirner.
Tiago Carneiro da Cunha was born in São Paulo, in 1973, and currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Multidisciplinary trained, he holds a graduate diploma from Goldsmiths College, in London. Based in Rio de Janeiro since 2001, he’s been displaying his work regularly in solo and group shows, such as Prospect 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego, USA, 2013); Sobrenatural, Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2013); A Iminência das Poéticas, 30th Bienal de São Paulo (2012); Tiago Carneiro da Cunha & Klara Kristalova, SFMOMA (San Francisco, USA, 2011); Liverpool Biennial (2002); Sydney Biennial (2002). He also works as a curator, having organized the exhibitions: Law of the Jungle, Lehmann Maupin Gallery (New York, 2010); Drunkenmasters, Galeria Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo, 2004). His work is part of many important collections all over the world, such as: MAM (Rio de Janeiro), MAR (Rio de Janeiro), Saatchi Collection (London), SFMOMA (San Francisco), TBA21 (Austria), among others.
