bernardo mosqueira the forms of time,

Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro presents As formas do tempo [The Forms of Time], a group exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, with Ana Clara Simões Lopes as assistant curator. The exhibition is part of the celebrations marking 50 years of Nara Roesler’s activity as a gallerist, a trajectory that began in 1976 in Recife and, over the decades, expanded to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and, in 2015, to New York, when it became the first Brazilian gallery to open a space in the city. Invited to create an exhibition celebrating this trajectory and its relationship with the territory of Rio de Janeiro, the curator draws from the reflective dimension inherent to anniversaries to consider, through artworks, different ways of understanding the relationships between being, time, and mystery. “It is indeed something quite extraordinary, especially if we consider how everything has changed over these past 50 years.” “There is no way to separate the recent history of Brazilian art from the history of Nara,” the curator states.

Taking Rio de Janeiro as a shared territory, the third exhibition held across Nara Roesler’s spaces brings together paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and installations articulated around multiple notions of time. “In the space, these categories and questions intersect through the conceptual, formal, narrative, and poetic gestures proposed by the artists and their works. While some works raise questions related to ancestry, the memories of the military dictatorship, and ecological transformations, others reflect on the role of the image in relation to time, on the finitude of our bodies, or on how artworks outlive and contradict us,” says Bernardo Mosqueira.

In addition to presenting works by 17 artists represented by the gallery, born in Rio de Janeiro or who have chosen the city as their place of residence and work, Bernardo Mosqueira also invited five young artists without commercial representation to take part in the exhibition. “As this is an exhibition about time, but also one in which we reflect on Nara’s trajectory, it was important for us to bring not only works by these highly established artists from the gallery’s roster, but also to open a small passage toward what is yet to come: presenting, within this pact with time, paths for artists who will still build relationships with the gallery. Beyond their practices being highly complementary to the group of artists presented, their ideas about time make significant contributions to our reflection,” the curator states.

The participating artists represented by the gallery are Abraham Palatnik (1928, Natal – 2020, Rio de Janeiro), Alice Miceli (1980, Rio de Janeiro), Angelo Venosa (1954, São Paulo – 2022, Rio de Janeiro), André Griffo (1979, Barra Mansa, Rio de Janeiro; lives in Rio de Janeiro), Antonio Dias (1944, Campina Grande, Paraíba – 2018, Rio de Janeiro), Brígida Baltar (1959 – 2022, Rio de Janeiro), Carlito Carvalhosa (1961 – 2021, São Paulo), Cristina Canale (1961, Rio de Janeiro), Daniel Senise (1955, Rio de Janeiro), Elian Almeida (1994, Rio de Janeiro), Manoela Medeiros (1991, Rio de Janeiro), Marcos Chaves (1961, Rio de Janeiro), Maria Klabin (1978, Rio de Janeiro), Milton Machado (1947, Rio de Janeiro), Raul Mourão (1967, Rio de Janeiro), and Vik Muniz (1961, São Paulo; lives in Rio de Janeiro).

As formas do tempo will also feature works by Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980, Rio de Janeiro), whose estate was represented by the gallery between 2005 and 2019, as well as invited artists Marcelle Nascimento (1999, Belém; lives in Rio de Janeiro), Guilhermina Augusti (1996, São Paulo; lives in Rio de Janeiro), Ana das Neves (2000, Rio de Janeiro), Mayra Carvalho (1997, Baixada Fluminense), and Fátima Aguiar (1991, Rio de Janeiro).