Carpintaria is proud to present FALA COISA, a dialogue between new works from Barrão (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1959) and Josh Callaghan (Doylestown, PA, U.S.A.). Curated by Raul Mourão, the show brings out contact points between the artists, who have maintained an ongoing relationship for decades, and whose assemblages have in common a sort of vegetal growth, as if banal or industrial-use items could grow through accretion of heterogeneous fragments. Both sculptors, the artists reconfigure everyday household objects through manual labor allied with humorous bricolage. The show resumes and updates a longstanding relationship dating back to the 1990s, when Callaghan was in Brazil for the NY/SP group show at Galeria Camargo Vilaça.

The exhibition title, FALA COISA (THING SPEECH), implies a step beyond the mute thingness of the art object and situates the works presented here on the plane of a dialogical scene involving the spectator, the artists and the objects themselves. In this dialog, each thing's pre-established identities and uses give way to a relational communication regime resembling an objectual dramaturgy, highlighting the theatrical and scenographic components of each artists' oeuvre.

In Callaghan's Manfrotto's Dream (2022), roots and tripods, starting from their formal kinship, negotiate their semantic contexts in order to fuse into a hybrid regime in which otherwise fixed terms give way to a mutant tripod-tree relation. In this dialogic scene, trees as much as tripods acquire newfound connotations, dislodging their associated semantic values. In the same way a rhyme is an acoustic pattern emerging from encounters between word sequences, in Barrão's Seleção Natural (Natural Selection) (2022), the grafted porcelain shapes form a structure of deliberate patterned interferences – signs that refuse to shape into a coherent texture, elbowing for room in a simultaneously amorphous and ordered arrangement. If tripods could dream, if porcelain was charged with an invisible attraction principle, they might speak of themselves in terms of the objects shown here.

Barrão was born in 1959 in Rio de Janeiro where he lives and works. Among his individual shows are: Zerbini, Barrão, Albano, Santander Cultural, Porto Alegre (2017), Paleotoca, Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo (2016), Fora Daqui, Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2015), Mashups, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, USA (2012); and Natureza Morta, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, Portugal (2010). The artist has also participated in group shows such as: Brasilidade pós Modernismo, CCBB - Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro; São Paulo; Brasília; Belo Horizonte (2021); Troposphere: Chinese and Brazilian Contemporary Art, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing (2017); A Casa, MAC USP - Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo (2015); Contraditório, Panorama da Arte Brasileira, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brasil; Alcalá, Madrid (2007); Encontros com o Modernismo, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (2004); Onde Está Você Geração 80?, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2004); and Caminhos do Contemporâneo, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (2002).

Josh Callaghan (Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1969), lives and works in Los Angeles, represented by Night Gallery. Among his individual shows are Cursive, Lazy Eye Gallery, Joshua Tree (2021); Promised Land, with Chaz Guest, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Social Block, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); LIFEFORCE, Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles (2016) and Soft Targets, Royale Projects, Palm Desert (2014). He has also participated in groups shows such as: Family Tree, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Return of the Dragons, Blossom Market, Los Angeles (2021); Majeure Force, Part One & Part Two, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Sample Platter - Contemporary Ceramic, Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Orange (2020); Note to Self, Royale Projects, Los Angeles (2018) and Hydroponic Forms, Galerie Ampersand, Cologne (2016)

Press release courtesy Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel.