ESTEVAN DAVI

Pagan Tales: The Golden Moon constitutes the third chapter of a body of work that began with A Queda do Primeiro Sol in São Paulo in 2023 and continued with Dias Depois da Queda “O Clarão” at Galeria Vermelho in 2025. If earlier works introduced the fall of the sun as a central axis and later unfolded in the persistence of its remaining light, this exhibition shifts toward a different symbolic register structured around the image of a golden moon.

The exhibition unfolds as a constellation of works conceived as independent episodes connected through a shared symbolic field. References to different belief systems and mythologies are present throughout and are approached as structures that remain active and continue to organize narratives around life, death, desire and the sacred.

Working with concrete, iron and oil paint, Davi develops a practice grounded in material processes. The works are produced through oxidation, erosion and transformation, allowing water, earth, air and metal to act directly in their formation. The resulting pieces operate within a temporal condition in which past, present and future coexist.

In this exhibition, references to medieval and pre Renaissance visual traditions become more explicit, including fresco techniques and figurative compositions associated with religious imagery. These elements are combined with other symbolic repertoires, forming a field that remains open and in transformation.

The works presented here continue an ongoing research that unfolds across different exhibitions. Variations in scale, material and technique reflect the development of this investigation, while maintaining a consistent engagement with concrete, iron and painting as central elements.

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Estevan Davi was born in 1999 in Brazil and lives and works in São Paulo. His practice is a constant experimentation in the studio, a laboratory of materials and elemental processes where time and matter produce speculative vestiges of imagined civilizations. In his work, concrete, iron, and oil paint, often combined in fresco paintings on cement, are investigated as active agents in dialogue with erosion, oxidation, and the direct action of the elements. References drawn from diverse mythologies and belief systems run through the practice, appropriated beyond their historical register: they appear as still-active structures, repeat and manifest in contemporary life and in the ways we narrate life, death, desire, and the sacred.

Recent exhibitions include Dias Depois da Queda “O Clarão”, Vermelho, São Paulo, (2025), Adiar o fim do mundo at FGV Arte, Rio de Janeiro (2025), and Cannibal Nature at Baró Galeria, Palma de Mallorca (2025). His work is part of the collection of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA), Rio de Janeiro.