ABRAHAM PALATNIK

Several works featured in Abraham Palatnik, Other Rhythms will be presented to the public for the first time. Abraham Palatnik ended up not showing these works during his lifetime, because he believed they didn’t fit in with his body of work. Bringing them back now is to show other facets of his poetics, other rhythms, thus offering new possibilities for looking at and perceiving his work,’ Farias points out.

One of the highlights of the show is a pair of reliefs from the early 1960s executed on wood, a lesser-known development of his Progressive Reliefs, but one that dialogues with a decisive moment in his career, which was his participation in the ateliers and painting workshops held at the Dom Pedro II Psychiatric Hospital, coordinated by Dr. Nise da Silveira, the psychiatrist responsible for advocating the use of art to maintain mental health. In these workshops, Palatnik came into contact with the pictorial production of the inpatient schizophrenic artists which, fascinated by their creative freedom, gave a new direction to his production. ‘It was an impact that demolished my ideas and convictions about art. [...] From then on, I started researching and experimenting in the field of light and movement, aiming for aesthetic results outside the usual standards and established techniques,’ said the artist in a statement in 2001.

Other unseen works in the exhibition are the paintings he did on glass with synthetic paint in the 1950s and 1960s, examples of the artist’s experimental use of different materials. Glass not only accentuates the luminous and sometimes machinic aspect of these compositions, but it was also important for the artist’s creations in the field of design, especially furniture, exemplifying how his visual research could dialogue with other forms of artistic creation.

As a large part of Palatnik’s production has the viewer and their perception as central aspects, the exhibition also includes works dealing precisely with this relationship, such as Lúdico L-5 (2006), in which the viewer is invited to intervene in a kind of game, creating new combinations and arrangements of the pieces.

There is also a unique body of work dating from the mid-1990s in which he uses regular shapes in compositions with different shades of the same colour or through sequences of colours that accentuate the kinetic character of the works.

Abraham Palatnik, Other Rhythms seeks to broaden the perception of the artist’s poetics, presenting little-known developments in his career that give the public a broader and more complete view of his unique artistic career.