Exhibition “Blue Blood”, by Marcos Chaves

A Nara Roesler Sao Paulo is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition “Blue blood”, with new and previously unseen works by Marcos Chaves. The works are the result of research that began in 2013, in which the artist printed photographs he took of various fabrics from the Eva Klabin Collection on carpets, as part of the 17th Breathing Project at the Eva Klabin Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. In the large, double-height room on the left side of the Nara Roesler gallery, Marcos Chaves will create an immersive environment with low lighting, focusing on the carpets hanging on the walls, all produced in 2025. The dimensions of the works vary from 200 x 266 cm to 150 x 112,5 cm. Covering the entire floor will be a 5,90 m x 8,39 m carpet, a large-scale version of a 2013 photograph, made of velvet from the Eva Klabin Collection. The carpets on the walls, in shades of red, reproduce photographs taken by the artist of the carpeted floors of historical European sites, such as the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, built in Rome in the 16th century; the staircase leading to the only extant throne of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), at the Château de Fontainebleau in France, the residence of the French kings, and dating from the early 12th century; and the Opéra Garnier, designed during the reign of Napoleon III (1808-1873), the XNUMXth palace to house the Paris Opera, founded by Louis XIV.

“I really like the idea of ​​gradient, the color that fades, and its French meaning of degraded, something worn out, decadent. With use over time, you can see the various layers in these European rugs, where the weave stands out and forms a grid. You can also see marks of the weight on the floor where the rug is placed, forming bas-reliefs. This idea of ​​something worn out and the geometry that emerges are what I like about this work, which ends up being almost a tribute to painting, as if I were painting with the photograph and the pile of the rug,” says Marcos Chaves. Some works create a “reverse” perspective, such as the one that shows the steps to Napoleon’s throne, which will be on the gallery’s façade, in the window.

“OUR LOVE WILL GROW VASTER THAN EMPIRES”

In the first room of the exhibition, Marcos Chaves will show three objects, also in red. The first is “Our Love Will Grow Vaster Than Empires” (2025), a verse by the English poet Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) inscribed on a piece of velvet and stuck to the wall with a Swiss Army knife. The work is derived from a 1991 work, “MessAge,” made with a knife and plastic. The other two works are “readymade,” from 1992 – the “Jaws” bag, discovered by Marcos Chaves at a flea market, and “Untitled,” a pair of high-heeled shoes found on the street in an area frequented by transvestites.

The critical text is by Ginevra Bria, a curator with twenty years of experience, dedicated to examining modern and contemporary art in Brazil. She is an assistant professor at Unicamp, where she is finishing her dissertation begun six years ago for her PhD in Art History at Rice University in Houston, USA – “The Noncolor of Indigeneity. In the Art History of Scientific Racism in Brazil, 1865-1935”. In her text about the Marcos Chaves exhibition at Nara Roesler São Paulo she emphasizes: “In total admiration for the practice of painting, which Chaves never approached or formalized, 'Sangue Azul' interweaves photographs, installations and sculptures”. “However, as an exhibition axis, photography borrows the titles of the works from the contradictions of supremacy of the nobility, politics and historical unions of reason for being (citing spaces of power such as Fontainebleau, Pamphilij and Garnier). GinevraBria also highlights that “in this project, between the slow erasure of vertical and horizontal dimensions, each represented or enlarged element is hypostatized in a temporal movement, while the noble dynamics of the reds are timeless. And ennobled”.

Service
Exhibition | Blue blood
From June 07th to August 16st
Monday to Friday from 10:19 to 11:15, Saturday from XNUMX:XNUMX to XNUMX:XNUMX