Nara Roesler Gallery is thrilled to announce Raul Mourão’s major public sculpture, CAGE HEAD, commissioned by Americas Society and presented by the Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee and NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program. CAGE HEAD will be installed from March 20 through November 5, 2023 on the mall at East 68th Street and Park Avenue in front of Americas Society.
With this sculpture, Mourão proposes a thoughtful intervention in the urban environment. The sculpture’s mass, making use of gravity as a physical force, invites the audience to reflect on movement and fixity, weight and lightness; the delicate balance that binds society together and the potential repercussions when pressure is exerted upon it.
“A work about the necessity and the urgency of rational engagement,” Mourão explains; “A work about the importance of careful and responsible interactions.” Standing five meters tall and built from Corten steel, a material commonly found at construction sites around the city, CAGE HEAD “emphasizes the importance of reflecting upon what we build every day through our actions, opinions, and words.”
CAGE HEAD is part of a series of sculptures that Mourão began in 2016 with the piece Empty head, home of the Devil. The scale of Empty head was developed to be in dialogue with the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (MUBE) building in São Paulo, designed by architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha.
Also on view at Americas Society is Mourão’s The New Brazilian Flag #3 (2018), which will be hung from the building’s exterior from January 24 through May 20, 2023. The flag is part of a series of works that the artist started in 2018. In the years since, Mourão has reconceived the flag’s formal structure, rethinking its shape and colors. In this version of the Brazilian flag, the flag’s blue center circle was cut out by the artist along with the stars representing the Brazilian states and the motto of the Brazilian Republic: “Order and Progress”. The project was developed through twelve different configurations, using this incomplete flag as a base element, and was exhibited at solo and group exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and London.