ZIV Gallery, Sao Paulo
The presence of women in places where they did not belong a few years ago can be transformative and revolutionary. Anyone who knows a little about the world of surfing knows how sexist and oppressive this environment can be for women wanting to start the sport from scratch.
FERNANDA YAMAMOTO was inspired by Sapê Beach in Ubatuba, characterized by the female solidarity and network to train women of all ages and surfing levels around the spot. Focusing on their common love for sport and honoring a mutual respect for the sea and its ecosystem.
Surfing there every week, FERNANDA YAMAMOTO never witnessed a conflict – on the contrary she noted women celebrating each other’s waves, exchanging tips, and encouraging one another. No feeling of competition, Sapê is a place of celebration and share.
The Sapê series is inspired by this experience of surfing among women while capturing their captivating and individual stories. FERNANDA YAMAMOTO depicts the way sport can gather a rich pallet of personalities, differences and aspirations around a common passion and common love for the nature.
ENIVO has been presenting in 2022 a series of three distinct exhibitions under the curatorship of the wise and visionary SIMON WATSON. In total more than 30 paintings narrating the deep connection between ENIVO and the people. Organized in three stories with a his solo show “AFETO” at the Museu de Arte Sacra in São Paulo, then his contribution to the collective exhibition “NALUTA NALATA” at the prestigious Museu Nacional da República in Brasília, and finally a solo show “BRAZA” at the Kates-Ferri Projects in New York City.
With 2022 coming to an end in a couple of months, we wished to share a rich retrospective of Enivo & Simon Watson’ fruitful collaboration.
AFETO – Museu de Arte Sacra de São Paulo
18.06.22 – 20.08.22
Curatorship of Simon Watson
Based on Enivo’s long-term relationship with the streets and its ecosystem – AFETO was inspired by Father Júlio Lancelotti, whom daily denunciation on social medias of the humanitarian crisis affected deeply Enivo. The series of 12 paintings aim to honor the anonymous humble people occupying and living on the sidewalks and shelters of São Paulo. To enrich his visuals, Enivo dug into the photographs of Daniel Kfouri, Lukas Juhler and Victor Angelo.
The exhibition invites the audience to discover the shocking and revolting reality of the people too many tend to ignore along their daily routine – whether a man obliged to eat garbage to survive, whether a family sleeping on the ground – while highliting their will to live – whether through jugglers on Rua Funchal, whether through Zé Cabrita (a deaf and mute political candidate) riding a decorated motorcycle in Grajaú’s streets.
Originally a successful and well-respected street artist, Enivo reminds that art is a powerful way to educate about the hard reality of megalopolis and a create way to empower those who are suffering and fighting to survive.
NALUTA/NALATA – Museu Nacional da República (MUN), Brasília
19.08.22 – 02.10.22
Curatorship of Simon Watson & Luan Cardoso
When walking into the MUN, impossible to miss the giant inflatable smiley – one of ENIVO’s trademarks – standing in the middle of the space as a connecting point beween the 16 artists curated by Simon Watson and Luan Cardoso.
Naluta/Nalata explores the spirit and dynamics of Brazil’s streets under the impulse of its new generation of artists – drawing attention to Brazil’s rich and vibrant urban culture. Graffiti & street artists largely contribute to the artistic landscape – using the walls as giant canvas to communicate directly with the population, no matter the social and cultural background.
Among Tinho, Diego Aliados, Mag Magrela, Mundano and even pixadores (cf. full list in images gallery), Enivo acquired the legitimacy to be a spokesman of the Brazilian street and urban culture to which he pays hommage with stories on canvas, and which he honors when regularly volunteering to bring colors through his spray in the favelas.
BRAZA – Kates-Ferri Projects, New York City
07.10.22 – 04.11.22
Curatorship of Simon Watson
Website / Instagram / Untitled Magazine
No better way than ending our tour into a party to which ENIVO invites us with his exhibition BRAZA – not in any location, but actually within the favelas to which he is and will always be deeply connected.
To describe the human dimension and complexity of the exhibition, we chose to share the words written by Untitled Magazine (link above) :
“To ENIVO these locales are home, and the vibrant scenes of women twerking or a man bleaching his friend’s hair in a hot tub are snapshots of local young adults casually passing the time.
While men and women are painted two-dimensionally, the objects they hold dear are rendered with bold strokes and dense detail; the tip of a blunt caked with texture here, a box of Delicia margarine jutting out there. Shimmering jewelry creates small mounds on the contours of a man’s body as he smokes with his iPhone in his pants with tattoos running up his arm and a digital watch on his wrist. In one painting, a masked drug dealer stands at the forefront while police officers are being paid off in the background.
The world behind the paintings is fully immersive. A rainbow line connects each canvas across the stark-white walls the way that power lines deliver selfies from phone to phone, running the energy of one image through the next in a grid-like connectedness. This transmitting thread runs through various heart-eyed emojis on the wall, giving the viewer the impression that the images are being shared and “liked” on social media as they look at the display”.
In 2022, ENIVO grew as both a man and an artist of the people – using his talent and creative mind to honor his origins, to bring his culture under the spotlight and to remind us that we are human after all and should embrace our own life and those of our neighbors.
Lobotex' new exhibition INSOLITO opened in May 2022 at A7MA Gallery in Sao Paulo, where the artist redirects us to what is unusual and abnormal through his paintings and sculptures.
Luís Alexandre Lobot‘s new exhibition redirects us to that which is unusual. When we see a monolith on the horizon or a wooden bench taken from its usual use, we are facing something in a state of disuse. When things jump out of their everyday function, they become mysterious again, operating outside the conventional rules.
It is in this aspect that we are pleased to see the results of the new Lobotian experiences in painting and sculpture, where his poetics, based around the reveries and ludic objects, was deepened.
The nomadic landscapes of his canvases continue to undo the hierarchies of perception in a mystical strategy to bypass our spirit. This game requires a certain ludic maturity, for it takes us back to incipient times when a wooden stump could be anything. In other words, we verify if we still know how to daydream.
His private oratory is a kind of heresy, because only those with artistic maturity, worthly of a child of a Bishop of the Rosary, can generate something of his own substance and worship it. This shared defiance makes us lose our common senses and review our concepts of religious tradition.
That art with humour is more pleasing, we already know, but to invent something adorable goes beyond irony. The art here inverts perspectives and makes us stop seeing with the eyes of ideology, religion, family, and others. It suggests us that it is possible to strongly grasp what is ours and that we can be the starting point of things.
Lobotex performs his good old maneuver of providing contemplative states. Contemplation, nowadays, is something very difficult, but here there is an insistence in reminding us that poetry is visible and invisible, and that children play with it on the streets, while the ignorant people step on it every day.
His horses, priviously maquettes in glass cases, have gained a larger exhibition scale. Venturing into three dimensionalities, incorporating the space artist, Lobotex produced sculptures made of hardwood with tools that can bite off a finger, intending to enlarge them in the future towards the magnitude of public parks.
We are left here satisfied with this process, wondering what the size has to do with life. We feel, in INSOLITO, that once again some insignias of artistic intensity are transmitted to us, for as Rubens Espirito Santo says, the greatness of art comes from the incessant practice of making something – object, movement or speech – that takes us out of bed to start the day, that makes us turn off the fucking Netflix to do something worthwile with our live.
Text by Bruno Pastore, Guarulhos, May 2022
