HKMA

Hildebrando de Castro

From Oct 20 to Dec 02 2017

LURIXS: is pleased to present the first solo show by Hildebrando de Castro at the gallery. The series HKMA gathers eight paintings created between 2016 and 2017, starting from photographs at the Museum of Arts of Hong Kong captured by the artist in a trip to Asia.

In this reunion of works, the artist presents pantings made with acrylic paint on canvas and clarifies his interest for the image of architecture. By using photograph for painting, Hildebrando reproduces beyond the lines and the rigorous geometry, the effect of light that salientares a temperature of color, defining shapes, and producing atmospheres.

About the artist

Hildebrando de Castro was Born in Olinda, Pernambuco, in 1957. Since the 70’s, he has been working on paintings, that became notorious by their astonishing precision. His first solo exhibition took place at Rio de Janeiro’s Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in 1980, when he presented a series of figurative drawings. After a long time working with pencil, he has adopted the pastel as his main material for 15 years. In 1999, he decided to work with oil paint. At that time, he moved out to New York, where he lived for 11 years and devoted his research to the oil paint on canvas. In the 90’s, he mostly painted bizarre characters. Then, photography’s lightning and framework was an inspiration for his paintings. “It is impossible not being involved by the weird beauty of Hildebrando’s paintings. The works are formally and technically striking, revealing the author’s virtuosity. These images reveal a very particular view of the world, they represent a unique personal universe, but not necessarily intimate or confessional”, wrote the Brazilian critic Frederico Morais when Hildebrando presented a show at Camargo Vilaça, in 1997. From 2010 on, he has been working on the series Janelas, geometric representations from photographies of buildings facades. The paintings (acrylic on canvas) reveal once more the rigorous making and the virtuosity of Hildebrando’s work. In 2016, he started a new series inspired by the architecture of the Honk Kong Museum of Art, that he obsessively photographed during a trip to China. The compositions are abstract, since the artist chooses to paint only architectural details. Hildebrando de Castro has been exhibiting his work since the 80’s in prestigious Brazilian institutions, such as Paço Imperial (Rio de Janeiro, 1998) and Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1995). He participated of group shows at Rio’s and São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art, Itaú Cultural (São Paulo, 2003), Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (Germany), among others. Hildebrando lives and works in São Paulo, Brasil.

So far, so close | Ivair Reinaldim

Relations between photograph and painting have been pointed out for some time by Theory and History of Art, especially when images reinforce it’s capacity of migration between one expression to another. Hildebrando de Castro uses the photographic image for painting. Not because photography allows him to go beyond the eyes, to insinuate a reality more truthful than this one in front of the artist’s eye. If the photographic apparatus stands out as a mechanism for combating the forgetfulness, for keeping alive the memory of a meeting with something that supposedly had seen, him, at the same time, reinforces a way of seeing the world, starting from a double framing: literal, by defining the “frame” that identifies the limits of that which is seen, and conceptual, by establishing and reiterating a visible system, that emphasizes more the dimension build from the vision than a supposed naturalized act of seeing. (…)

About the curator

Ivair Reinaldim is a Professor from the History and Theory of Art Department and Permanent Professor of Post-Graduation in Visual Arts at School of Fine Arts of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (EBA-UFRJ). He taught theoretical courses at Parque Lage School of Visual Arts (2009-2014); he is an editor of the magazine Arte & Ensaios and acts as an independent curator. He is experienced in the areas of Critic, Curatorship, Historiography, History and Theory of Art.