Nara Roesler São Paulo is pleased to present Choices, a solo exhibition by Rodolpho Parigi (1977, São Paulo). Curated by Dutch art critic Krist Gruijthuijsen, the show brings together works created especially for the occasion. The artist, who is moving to New York, considers this exhibition “a kind of farewell to Brazil.”
For Gruijthuijsen, the fragility of the body, understood as a site of identity, meaning, and continuous transformation, is a constant that both constitutes and inspires Rodolpho Parigi’s work. According to the artist, “painting functions less as a tradition inherited through lineage and more as an ecosystem in which images, forms, and histories circulate, collide, and transform.” In his canvases, “fragments of art history coexist with anatomical diagrams, botanical structures, graphic motifs, and traces of popular culture.” As the curator notes, “looking at Parigi’s paintings is like trying to hold onto a dream after waking, the image lingers, but continues to slip away.”
The curator observes that, in Choices, the works articulate a non-linear sense of time, in which images return transformed and challenge the idea of a fixed history. In front of Parigi’s paintings, he highlights a flow in which perception oscillates and images do not reveal themselves immediately, demanding time and attention. In contrast to the speed of contemporary imagery, he emphasizes that “the slow and deliberate work of painting interrupts,” proposing an experience of prolonged looking.
Rodolpho Parigi states that these new paintings “condense all of my work over the past twenty years,” synthesizing an ongoing investigation in which different visual and conceptual repertoires intertwine. His creative process is marked by meticulous elaboration, in which each element is treated with autonomy, as he notes when saying that “each one is made as a single painting.”
By incorporating references to historical artists such as Victor Brecheret (1894–1955), Maria Martins (1894–1973), and Tarsila do Amaral (1886–1973), the artist does not seek direct quotation, but rather the transformation of these repertoires, affirming that “they become mine.” In his practice, the idea of metamorphosis is central, “everything is always transforming, thought, the body, and there is the metamorphosis of images, of art history, of queer histories,” pointing to an approach in which past and present contaminate one another.
Another observation made by Krist Gruijthuijsen is that “Parigi’s exploration of the body has never been limited to the canvas alone.” “In the early 2010s, he introduced an alter ego named Fancy Violence, an extravagant and theatrical persona that appeared in performances, exhibitions, and public events in São Paulo and Berlin. Fancy Violence was, in many ways, a living extension of Parigi’s paintings, a figure that embodied the instability of his images. In its flamboyant excess, Fancy Violence foregrounds sexuality, theatricality, and self-construction, echoing the thought of Judith Butler, who describes gender not as a predetermined given, but as an ongoing act of performance.”
“In this exhibition, looking back is not a gesture of indulgence, but an active and unsettling process. The past is less a stable archive than a contested terrain, populated by images charged with histories of power, desire, ideology, and violence. Parigi’s revisitations transform these images from fixed points of reference into questions. To remember is not to repeat, but to dismantle and reanimate. Images are extracted from their original contexts, placed in the present, and allowed to contradict themselves, absorbing new layers of meaning. Authority dissolves, and history becomes material,” writes Krist Gruijthuijsen.