Exhibition "São Paulo, Multiplicity", by Leonardo Finotti

A CAIXA Cultural São Paulo presents the Leonardo Finotti exhibition – São Paulo, Multiplicity, individual work of the photographer and architect Leonardo Finotti. Curated by Agnaldo FariasThe exhibition occupies the D. Pedro II gallery on the ground floor and the Neuter Michelon gallery on the first floor of the space.

The exhibition brings together photographs from ten series created by Finotti throughout his career, focusing on the city of São Paulo: São Paulo Vertical, Habitar Mendes da Rocha, Marketscapes, Necropoli[s]tics, Pelada, Re:Favela, Latinitudes, Dialogues Tropicais, VerAcidade, and Brutiful. In common, the works reveal the artist's attentive gaze towards architecture, urban space, and the relationships between city, memory, and social use. To this end, the artist considers the images and their supports, the material dimension they should assume (paper, fabric, metal, etc.), and the way to exhibit them, in this case, in collaboration with Michelle Jean de Castro.

“Today there is an illusion that images are superficial and ephemeral, when in fact they have weight, they have substance, they mark our daily lives and can mark us forever,” explains Agnaldo Farias. “In Finotti’s work, photography not only represents reality: it creates fissures, cracks, allowing the real to appear in the details, in the gaps, in what normally goes unnoticed.”

In the photographs of the series São Paulo Vertical (2022), Finotti and Mayo Bucher propose a specific snapshot of the largest metropolis in Latin America, focusing on its intense process of verticalization. Although São Paulo is present in various phases of their work, here the photographer concentrates on the landscape built in height, a result of urban transformations that have marked the city where he has lived for more than half of the last few years.

The series *Habitar Mendes da Rocha* (2013) originates from the exhibition *10+10*, presented in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and stems from a counterpoint between residential experiences in modernity and contemporaneity. In this new approach, Finotti turns his gaze to living in the architecture of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, constructing a more intimate vision of spaces, mostly inaccessible to the public.

The series necropoli(s)tics and pelada expand this field of investigation by exploring themes such as territory, collective use, and urban structures, reinforcing Finotti's authorial approach, which oscillates between documentary rigor and a critical reading of architecture and the city. In the installation for CAIXA Cultural São Paulo, necropoli(s)tics occupies the octagon through an installation formed by a set of photos printed on fabric.

In marketscapes, the photographer observes popular markets and exchange spaces as fundamental structures of urban life, where architecture, informal economy, and sociability intertwine. In re:favela, the focus falls on territories marked by self-construction, highlighting spatial solutions created from urgency, adaptation, and collective experience.

The Brutiful series proposes a critical review of brutalism, moving away from purely formal readings to highlight its insertion in the contemporary urban landscape and its everyday uses. In turn, Latinitudes, one of the most important series in Leonardo Finotti's career, broadens the geographical scope beyond Brazil, articulating a perspective on modern and contemporary architecture in Latin America, showing affinities, contrasts, and tensions between urban projects, social and historical contexts.

The Tropical Dialogues series elaborates on an overview of contemporary Brazilian architecture that was exhibited in Africa, while the VerAcidade series, which reveals São Paulo from a new perspective – from above, from the streets and its edges – will be presented in the form of an installation composed of the offset plates used in the printing of the book São Paulo: from west to east.

By bringing together different moments and series from his work, Leonardo Finotti – São Paulo, Multiplicity offers the public a comprehensive and critical reading of the city and its ways of inhabiting it, reaffirming photography as a fundamental tool for thinking about architecture and urban space.

“Leonardo Finotti – São Paulo: Multiplicity” is an exhibition presented by CAIXA Cultural, organized by Instituto URBE, conceived and produced by Phi Projetos and Cinnamon, and sponsored by CAIXA and the Government of Brazil.

Service
Exhibition São Paulo, Multiplicity
From February 07th to April 26th
Tuesday to Sunday, from 8 am to 19 pm