GROUP EXHIBITION

Starting its 2017 exhibition calendar, concurrently with a solo show by Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea, Galeria Nara Roesler | São Paulo presents Metrópole , a group show comprising 28 pieces by Alberto Baraya, Alice Miceli, Cao Guimarães, Hélio Oiticica, Isaac Julien, Lucia Koch, Marco Maggi, Marcos Chaves, Melanie Smith, Milton Machado, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Paulo Bruscky, Vik Muniz, and Virginia de Medeiros. Organized by the gallery’s art director Alexandra Garcia Waldman, the exhibition features these artists’ takes on the city and urban living, with its specificities, complexities, and adversities, from critical, creative, and poetic viewpoints.

Brasília, Belo Horizonte, New York, Santiago, Amsterdam, and Recife are some of the cities covered in the show. Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida portray the electrifying New York of the 70s in their short film Agrippina é Roma Manhattan (1972), whereas Milton Machado turns to the city’s automobiles in NY Cars (2016), and Vik Muniz looks to the skies for his Pictures of Clouds: 59th Bridge series (2002).

Whereas Cao Guimarães’ Brasília (2011) depicts the more urban, chaotic side of the Brazilian federal capital, Alberto Baraya of Colombia revisits the city and its landmarks through poetry in the photo series Estudos comparados modernistas (2010-2011). For the US-born Paul Ramirez Jonas, collective awareness is key to urban life, as his serigraph Assembly (Ghazi Stadium) (2013) implies. For his part, Paulo Bruscky dabbles in humor in the series Amsterdam erótica (1982), created during his time living in the Dutch capital. In a world where most of the population lives in cities, Metrópole shows how some artists in the last 40 years have viewed and journeyed through the places we inhabit.

about the gallery
Galeria Nara Roesler is a leading Brazilian contemporary art gallery, representing seminal Brazilian and Latin American artists who emerged in the 1950s as well as preeminent mid-career and emerging artists who dialog with the currents put forth by these historical figures. Founded by Nara Roesler in 1989, the gallery has consistently fomented curatorial practice while preserving the utmost quality in art production. This has actively been put into practice through a select and rigorous exhibitions program created in close collaboration with its artists; the implementation and fostering of the Roesler Hotel program, a platform for curatorial projects; and continued support of artists beyond the gallery space, working with institutions and curators in offsite shows. In 2012 the gallery doubled its São Paulo exhibition space, in 2014 expanded to Rio, and in 2015 opened in New York City, continuing its mission to provide the best platform for its artists to show their work.