One of the few artists dedicated to sculpture to emerge from the Geração 80 [80s Generation], which was mainly focused on painting, Angelo Venosa – originally from São Paulo but now a resident of Rio de Janeiro – is bringing to the city of his birth the exhibition Penumbra. Curated by art historian and curator Vanda Klabin, the show at Galeria Nara Roesler derives from another one with the same name held last year in Vila Velha (state of Espírito Santo).
The show at the São Paulo gallery will feature eight sculptures. Of these, six were shown at the museum in Espírito Santo, while the other two, even though produced in 2017, are being shown here for the first time. “Uneasy and questioning, his works problematize the spectator’s vision, and stem from the fluid world of handicraft and digital technology, which are part of the artist’s working logic and enlarge the field of his poetics,” the curator points out.
The show features works produced in materials such as bronze, wood, fabric and fiberglass that explore full and empty areas, creating shapes that acquire unexpected plasticity. The sculptures combine with the shadows they cast to produce an enigmatic body, and together they construct a particular dreamlike atmosphere. “The real inclusion of the shadow opens a possible space, articulates our perception, our modes of seeing, and this simultaneity of events that segments a new territory seems to undermine the truth of the eye and allow for a great variety of accesses to a codified reality,” the curator states.
According to Klabin, moreover, the new series of artworks by Angelo Venosa gives rise to many disconcerting questions. “The agencing of other materials to construct a new body of work will guide the creation of a group of artworks wrapped in incidences of light, developed within an inner turbulence, where the forms oscillate and take up their positions, thus multiplying the planes, creating a spatial ambiguity.”
