Exhibition “Alex Červený: Mirabilia”

A Pinacoteca of São Paulo, museum of the Secretariat of Culture, Economy and Creative Industry of the State of São Paulo, opens the exhibition Alex Červený: Mirabilia, on the 2nd floor of the Pinacoteca Estação building.

The panoramic exhibition presents the artist's iconographic universe over more than 40 years of career, with an emphasis on his research on travel, real or dreamlike, mixing biblical and mythological characters, pop icons and scientific illustration. Curated by Renato Menezes, the exhibition includes fundamental works, bringing together works such as Quem não chora não mama (1999), one of the first he created, and Aquifer, which was at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, in 2021, in addition to two new paintings made especially for the show.

Alex Červený (1963) began his artistic production in the 1980s. Since then, he has created a body of work that places him among the most original and inventive artists of his generation. The exhibition at the Pinacoteca brings together more than a hundred works, including tiles, polychrome ceramics, bronze sculptures, paintings and engravings, the result of a collection of very diverse references, articulated with a lot of erudition and humor, but which manage to demonstrate what the past it is the raw material of his work, to paraphrase the artist himself. With rigor and plastic coherence, the artist created a particular universe in which the human being, the word, the landscape and the sky are the protagonists.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Alex Červený: Mirabilia is the artist's most comprehensive exhibition, and highlights the use of different media with which he works. Mastering the technique of painting on ceramics with dexterity, Červený produced a series of tile works, of which the set constitutes the largest ever presented to date. There are 20 pieces of tile and 7 ceramic plates. Furthermore, an exceptional collection of bronze sculptures is displayed in the exhibition room, which represent a set of symbols very specific to the artist, taken up in other works such as Glossário dos Nomes Proper (2015) and Para Além do Bem e do Mal (2015). .

Independently trained, Červený has a prolific production, characterized by the constant exercise of revisiting his own work and themes portrayed in his works. Wide landscapes in which images of dreams and fantasies, pop icons and mythological figures appear; elements of nature such as water, fire and earth; male figures with arms raised; imaginaries of the beginning of the world and the apocalypse. There are several references by the artist from São Paulo seen in fundamental works, such as a set of five small-format paintings, considered his first exercise in oil painting, Go out, go shopping, see beautiful people, catch a movie!
(2012) and Guanabara (2011).

Two panoramic paintings were created especially for the exhibition at the Pinacoteca. For Cándido López (2023) is a tribute to the Argentine artist who lost part of his right arm while fighting in the Paraguayan War. Relearning to paint with his left hand, he became a celebrated painter of panoramic battle scenes. Luz del Fuego (2023) places Brazilian dancer Dora Vivacqua (Espírito Santo, 1917-1967) at the center of the painting, paying homage to the character known for training snakes. In the painting, the artist revisits themes dear to his iconographic repertoire, including the island, as an allegory of loneliness, and nudity, as a sign of the body's vulnerability in the world.

Service
Exposure | Alex Červený: Mirabilia
From September 16th to March 10th, 2024
Wednesday to Monday, from 10 am to 18 pm.
On Thursdays, the museum remains open
until 20pm and entry is free after 18pm