Visiting Artist | Alberto Simon

Luciana Brito Galeria presents new installation by Alberto Simon (São Paulo, 1961) as the second project of the Visiting Artist program inaugurated this year by the gallery. The new artwork can be seen from October 7th alongside with more works by Alberto Simon.

Through an artistic research that questions the interface between perception and reality – specifically, the mismatch between these two categories –, Alberto Simon presents a highly original installation that focus on the dysfunctional relationship between the curatorial and the artistic proposition.

The visitor is right at the beginning challenged by an irreverent situation: benches wrapped in plastic disposed like a voyeuristic auditorium, men's magazines and women's magazines on a little desk and a couple (two mannequins) laying in a broken bed as the nucleus of the installation. The precariousness of the situation poetically relates to a certain aesthetic and semantic discomfort present in the scene; one cannot seat in the benches, the couple's presence suggests an act that cannot be consummated, the situation alludes to a reality that the viewer does not expect to experience in an art gallery. All these poetically build frustrations or, better, mismatches – brought forth by the exhibition's title as well – trigger a process of reflection on the audience, entailing a more elementary and objective relationship of the latter with the artist work.

Considering it from a broader point of view, the installation also succeeds in establishing a witty dialogue with the modernist legacy and its premises, embodied by the gallery's distinctive architecture (originally, a residential building). From this perspective, Alberto Simon's irony subtly reveals another mismatch, namely, one between the original project framed by modernist ideas and the actual reality.

Also on view in the show is a series of canvases where the artist invites us to reflect on painting and its traditions. By employing digital technologies, Alberto Simon develops a hyper-realist simulacrum of painting, creating images bred by a thoughtful inquiry on the issue of visual arts' status in our contemporary world.

 The show runs until October 28th and is the second exhibition of the recently-conceived program Artista Visitante, aiming to cultivate an even more dynamic program by inviting artists that are not part of Luciana Brito Galeria’s original casting to develop proposals that run parallel to its formal exhibitions calendar.

About the Visitin Artist Program

With the purpose of reinforcing its program, Luciana Brito Galeria presents Visiting Artist and opens its exhibiting space to new artistic iniciatives. The new program is based on inviting artists that are not part of the group represented by the Gallery to develop proposals to be showed pararel to the current exhibitions. Visiting Artist intends to foster dialogue between different artists and the space of the gallery through new partnerships.