From Aug 09 to Sep 15 2018
Opening: August 9, 2018
About the Artist
Ricardo Alcaide was born in 1967, in Caracas, Venezuela. He currently lives and works in São Paulo. Articulated between the poetic and the political, their juxtapositions of images and objects question how people deal with economic and social exclusion in different contexts. Ricardo was interested in the debt, often unknown, of the Latin American modernist movement with vernacular world architecture. His recent exhibitions include: solo exhibition, von Bartha Basel, Basel (2017); Down The Line, gallery Johannes Vogt, New York; Good News, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York; Informal Order, SITU project, Leme Gallery, São Paulo (2016); The History of the Image, curated by Leda Catunda, SIM Galeria, Curitiba; Monochrome Undone, SPACE, Sayago and Pardon Collection, Irvine, California; Not much more, Arroniz Contemporary Art. Mexico DF; A Phenomenon Among Others, Baró Galeria, São Paulo; Lines of the hand, Sicardi Gallery, Houston; Critical form, Galeria Cristinger De Mayo, Zurich (2015); Displacement, Galeria Alejandra Von Hartz, Miami; Settlements, Baró galeria, São Paulo; The Language of Human Consciousness, Athr Gallery, Jeddah. Saudi Arabia; Where There is Protest There is Business, Agustina Ferreyra Gallery, San Juan de Puerto Rico (2014); Solo Project, Curator of Jose Roca. Paint NY Art Fair, New York; Incidental Geometry, Project Room - Galeria Josee Bienvenu, New York; Vision of Paradise: Wild Thought, commissioned by Julieta Gonzalez and Pablo Leon de la Barra, in Rio de Janeiro; From Disruption To Abstraction, New Art Projects Gallery, London (2013); Prototype Vernacular, Office # 1, Caracas, Venezuela; Radical Optimism, Gallery Josee Bienvenu, New York (2012). His work is part of the following collections: MAR, Rio de Janeiro Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro. Sayago & Pardon, Los Angeles, CA. LIMAC Museum of Contemporary Art of Lima, Zabludowicz Collection. London. Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo. Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas.
Release | Camila Belchior
The production of Ricardo Alcaide, a Venezuelan artist based in São Paulo, stems from his interest in exploring what debris, urban chaos, forgotten and devalued spaces, materials, façades and structures of cities can reveal about the societies that receive.
Throughout his career, from his fascination with rudimentary material and modernist architecture, Alcaide created works that embrace a group of dichotomies: construction / destruction, chaos / order, presence / absence, industrial / artisanal, sophistication / precariousness , change / permanence, ordered by a desire for systematic simplification of form. Briefly, in a dialogue with principles of abstraction and modernism, the power of Alcaide's installations, paintings, photographs and sculptures are found in the formal subtleties that poetically point to the socioeconomic problems that the artist identifies as manifested in urban centers.
Composed of unpublished works created this year, Plano Futuro, the first exhibition of Alcaide in Rio de Janeiro, follows the same line of research that has guided its production to date and deals with themes with optimism by highlighting the possibility and a future projection which are sown today, despite the current conditions. The black and white paintings carry in themselves, in the holes and in the small imperfections of finishing, memories of the structures used to form the horizontal grooves (wood masks screwed and removed after the paintings of the plates) like fossils that announce what one day was there and had its part.
In Lighten Up, through the use of vibrant color edges in the group of six mdf panels painted with central rectangles in bright gray, Alcaide propose the possibility of elevation and illumination (of the spirit, of a structure, perhaps) announced in the title of work. In the One Side series, made up of Bahian bricks coated on one side with different materials, the artist creates a set of textures, surfaces and materials that together emphasize that there are many possibilities to go from the same starting point.
If today we see ourselves in the midst of uncertainties, Future Plan encourages us to remember that change is a constant and that the future is drawn today.
Camila Belchior is an art critic and an independent writer.