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Lucas Arruda

LUCAS ARRUDA

Assum Preto David Zwirner 9 April–28 May 2022 Paris
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Press Release

David Zwirner is pleased to present Assum Preto, an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda (b. 1983), on view at the gallery’s Paris location. This marks the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery.

Arruda’s paintings are intricate, meditative compositions that blur the boundaries between mnemonic and imaginative registers, while bringing into form a complex rendition of landscapes that is more a product of a state of mind than anything else. Titled after a species of blackbird native to eastern Brazil—whose mundane birdsong is said to transform into a beautiful melody if the bird’s eyesight has been removed, according to local tradition—Assum Preto continues Arruda’s investigations into light and darkness, and their metaphysical effects. As the artist observes, ‘It seems that these birds get distracted by everything in their surroundings, so they sing out of tune and in a dispersed way. Blindness is what makes them sing harmonically. I think light is what binds my works together ... as if I am constantly balancing light and shadow.’1

1 Lucas Arruda, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, April 2018; reproduced in Lucas Arruda (Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’Art, 2018), p. 86.

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About the Artist

Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda’s (b. 1983) landscapes and seascapes are characterized by their subtle rendition of light. Painted from memory, they are devoid of specific reference points, achieving instead their variety through the depiction of atmospheric conditions. Verging on abstraction, the compositions are grounded by an ever-present, if sometimes faint, horizon line that offers a perception of distance. Intimately sized, they appear at once familiar and imaginary. Through his often evocative and textured brushstrokes, Arruda foregrounds the materiality and physicality of paint, while also recalling his genres’ historical associations with the notion of the romantic sublime.

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About the Gallery
Since opening its doors in 1993, David Zwirner has been home to innovative, singular, and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres. The gallery has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today, and has maintained long-term representation of a wide-ranging, international group of artists and estates. Based in New York with spaces in Chelsea and the Upper East Side, David Zwirner expanded to Europe in 2012 with a gallery in an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse in London’s Mayfair district, and opened its first gallery in Asia in January 2018 in Central Hong Kong.
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Address
108 rue Vieille du Temple
Paris
France
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm
(1)
Paris 108 rue Vieille du Temple
David Zwirner contemporary art gallery in Paris France
David Zwirner
108 rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, France
+33 (0)1 85 09 43 21
http://www.davidzwirner.com

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm
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