Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro is proud to announce the opening of Sérgio Sister: Linked Paintings, a solo exhibition of the São Paulo-based artist, who has established himself as one of the most prominent names in contemporary Brazilian painting. The show, which opens on November 3 and will be on view until December 23, 2021, is a unique opportunity to discover Sister's recent production. With an oeuvre spanning over five decades, the artist has become one of the most important figures of monochromatic painting in Brazil, having participated in two editions of the São Paulo Biennial (1967 and 2002) and with works included in major institutional collections, such as the Center Georges Pompidou, in Paris, the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and the Pinault Collection, in Venice.
The exhibition showcases a selection of new works produced during the pandemic, furthering the artist's investigation into the possibilities of chromatic behaviours and materiality of the surface. The prolific effect of Sérgio Sister's painting emerges from his engagement with light as a means of activating colour which, in turn, allows for viewers to perceive chromatic variations emphasized by irregular brushstrokes that reveal the rich material intricacy of the coloured surfaces. The renovating power of his practice in the visual field seeks to integrate the fundamental elements of painting—colour, light, and gesture—, creating chromatic compositions with unique and subtle effects based on colour juxtaposition.
These characteristics define Sister's works as 'dense painting, rich in textures and surface variations, fundamentally monochromatic,' in the words of the curator and art historian Luis Pérez-Oramas. The monochrome, then, is the contemporary genre to which the artist has been dedicated since the 1980s, becoming 'one of the most subtle and complex representatives of monochrome painting in America.'
The show also includes a series of objects situated between painting and sculpture, which place colours in relation to each other within three-dimensional structures. Sister's objects, such as 'Batten', 'Boxes', and 'Linked Paintings' series, which the artist has been producing since the turn of the century, invite the audience to reflect upon the potential effects and reverberations of colour and material combinations.
In 'Linked Paintings', the audience will have the chance to take a close look at the recent production of a master of contemporary Brazilian art, comprehending the latest developments in his investigation into the materiality of painting through subtle compositions, in which the wealth of the process instills the surface with a depth and dimensionality of the material itself and its interaction with light.
Sérgio Sister started painting in the late 1960s, at the same time when he was working as a journalist and became engaged with political action. In 1970, Sister was arrested for his militancy. While detained for 19 months at the Tiradentes Prison, in São Paulo, Sister attended painting workshops held at the institution. As a part of Geração 80, Sister revisits an ancient theme in painting: the interplay between surface and three-dimensionality, in an attempt to liberate painting in space. What has marked his production at that time was the superimposition of autonomous chromatic layers coexisting harmoniously side by side.
Today, his work combines painting and sculpture. He uses supports derived from found structures and from systems designed to serve our everyday needs, as we can see in the 'Ripas' series, produced since the late 1990s (strips), and in Caixas series, produced since 2009, whose names are appropriate of the manufactured products from which they derive. These are sculptural paintings made from found wooden beams that resemble crates, porticos, or window frames. Sister paints the beams with different colours and assembles them into configurations that allow various depths, shadows, and experiences of colour to emerge.
Press release courtesy Galeria Nara Roesler.
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