This Wednesday (8/3), Gomide & Co opens its new headquarters with the exhibition I don't see the time, by Lenora de Barros. On the corner of Avenida Paulista and Angélica, the new exhibition space marks Thiago Gomide's ten years as a gallery owner in São Paulo, at his third and largest address in the city. Conceived by the AR architects office (Marina Acayaba, Juan Pablo Rosenberg and Ana Flavia Piacentini), with lighting design by Fernanda Carvalho, the project values urban kindness, in an architecture that dialogues with the city, welcomes the gallery public and is inviting to passers-by.
According to Gomide, one of the great assets of the new headquarters is to keep ongoing exhibitions and the collection in the same place. “Before, if a collector came to visit us, interested in one of the artists we represent, we showed images of the works and had to schedule another visit to the address where they were kept. We lost speed”, says the gallery owner, who at his first address, on Rua Oscar Freire, kept 80% of his collection on another floor of the same building. When he moved to the previous gallery, in the villa designed by Flávio de Carvalho (1899-1973), near Alameda Lorena, Thiago still kept his collection in the building of the first gallery.
“Now, we have a comfortable environment, a meeting room and a waiting room where the collector's visit becomes more constructive. The time he stays in here is 20 times longer than at other addresses”, says Thiago, who also invested in interior design, with furniture created by designer Cláudia Moreira Salles and, last but not least, works from the gallery’s collection, by artists such as León Ferrari, Mira Schendel, Lygia Clark, Sergio Camargo and Antonio Dias.
The AR Arquitetos office, which signed the project for the new Gomide & Co, had also retrofitted the Rio Negro Building (renamed Rosa), completed in 2020, and which now houses the gallery. And he was also responsible for the architecture of Bergamin & Gomide, at its first address, on Oscar Freire. Some elements of the new Gomide & Co were already present in the renovation, such as the external staircase, which functions as a sequence of benches along the façade in Angélica, either for passers-by or, now, for visitors to the new space. As well as transparency, another striking aspect of the ground floor.
Architect Juan Pablo Rosenberg highlights the natural light that bathes the gallery's internal space, and the possibility of opening the new headquarters to the street, during vernissages, yet another component of the project's “urban kindness”. “On the corner of the avenues, we maintained a visual permeability, both to invite the public to enter the exhibition space, and for passers-by to discover that there is a gallery there”, says the architect. For him, the arrival of Gomide & Co could give a new lease of life to that area, as another destination on the Paulista cultural circuit.
“The more degraded a place is, the more it tends to be displeased. When you leave the place well lit, inhabited, frequented, the tendency is for the surroundings to be better maintained and preserved”, evaluates Rosenberg, who even suggested to Thiago that he go beyond the borders of the gallery and carry out, in the square in front, happenings , performances, etc., extensions of what happens at Gomide & Co. The idea is really great.
TRAJECTORY
Born in Belo Horizonte, Thiago Gomide liked visual arts since he was a boy, he thought he would become an artist. He studied architecture in the capital of Minas Gerais, thinking of a profession “to survive”, in case the desired career in the arts did not take off. He ended up not completing the course, but, very young, he already had his first experience in the secondary market with a store where he sold modernist furniture, a business that started in a somewhat unusual way.
His mother, the architect Meire Gomide, had done a project for Casacor in 1997, in the capital of Minas Gerais, for which she asked her son for help and insisted on buying a large quantity of original furniture by great masters, such as Joaquim Tenreiro, Sergio Rodrigues and José Zanine Caldas, among others, at very low prices at the time. Once Casacor was finished, the architect proposed selling those pieces to her son for the same amount he had paid, and he could sell them in BH for higher prices, since she had renovated them.
From there came such a store, in which Thiago, who had many artists and photographers among his clients, occasionally exchanged furniture for works. The business, after all, was more profitable. He started going to auctions and galleries, buying art. He read an article about a documentary by filmmaker Zelito Viana about the collections of Minas Gerais collectors. In the article, there was a work by the artist Tunga - true rouge (1997) - illustrating the Bernardo Paz collection. There were rumors that Paz was building sheds and buying a lot of artwork.
Immediately, Thiago called the collector, who invited him to lunch, in which he announced that he was building “the greatest museum in the world”, in fact what would become the Inhotim Institute, inaugurated in 2006, in the town of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais. It was 2002, and Thiago decided to close the furniture store, after offering to work with Paz: “I want to help you build your dream”, Thiago told the collector.
There, says Thiago, he did everything, “everyone who had a problem would come to me to solve it”. But he also had his first contacts with the grand world of art, from major exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, to fairs, such as Art Basel. In December 2007, he asked for the accounts and came to São Paulo, where the following year he started working at Bolsa de Arte, by Jones Bergamin, known as Peninha.
From there, at the suggestion and opportunity of Peninha himself, he joined the gallerist's daughter, Antonia Bergamin, with whom he would open, in 2013, his first gallery in São Paulo, Bergamin & Gomide. As his experience at Bolsa de Arte was with the secondary market, he maintained the same profile at the new gallery, until 2019, when they incorporated the primary one. In May 2021, Antonia and Thiago moved to their house in Vila dos Jardins. A month later, she left the partnership, and Thiago renamed the gallery Gomide & Co.
THE NEW HEADQUARTERS
The new Gomide & Co becomes part of the Paulista cultural corridor, where Japan House, Sesc Avenida Paulista, Itaú Cultural, Masp and Instituto Moreira Salles are located, among others. The gallery has 600 square meters - against 140 square meters of the first and 100 square meters of the previous one - and it is on the ground floor of the Pink Building, whose retrofit was also designed by Juan Pablo Rosenberg and Marina Acayaba, from the office that bears their surnames. Inside, Gomide now has a double height of 5 meters, which can accommodate works of up to 4mx10m.
In the previous venues, the gallerist did not have such a high wall, or the necessary distance to display works of large dimensions that were not pending. In 2019, for example, when he presented an exhibition dedicated to the Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, Thiago was unable to exhibit one of his creations, precisely because of lack of space.
Changes at Gomide & Co are not limited to the new headquarters, however. In February, the gallery announced that Luisa Duarte - art critic, curator and researcher with more than 15 years of experience in contemporary art - was joining her team as artistic director. “It comes mainly for us to expand the primary program, of representation of artists, to increase from the current eight to 20. And to make sure that the gallery is not limited to the very expensive works of the secondary market, but can serve, for example, a couple young, under 30 years old, who wants to buy something for a maximum of R$ 10”, explains the gallerist.
“We also have a team of artists who demand thought, coherence and time for discussion about their productions, which is different from my time”, complements Thiago, who announced another novelty: the arrival at the gallery of Fabio Frayha, former -director of MASP, an administrator specialized in the world of visual arts, who becomes its partner.
LENORA DE BARROS
In 2022, Lenora de Barros presented, from April to July, the installation Retromemory at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, she was involved in the 59th Venice Biennale and with the exposure My language, opened in October and on display at the Pinacoteca until April 9. Your new show, I don't see the time it had already been scheduled to open the Gomide & Co exhibition calendar in 2023, at the new headquarters.
From December to February, Lenora concentrated on the works she is presenting now. Gomide says that she made a single request to the artist: “explore the façade well”. “There are 150 meters facing Angélica, and this is what will allow us to bring the city inside the gallery, a type of space that people tend to be concerned about whether to enter or not. It is to enter, yes. And Lenora came up with the idea of an LED panel with words related to time, such as delay, anticipate, perennial, delay, etc., from a poem that was inspired by a childhood game she played with her mother, Electra [Barros, woman artist and designer Geraldo de Barros]”, he says.
Em I don't see the time, Lenora presents 12 works, mostly unpublished, whose common denominator is an elaboration on time. The show will include photographs, video, sound installation and even a ping-pong table, where the artist plays and invites the public to play too, with the relationships between language, temporality and the body.
SERVICE
I don't see the timeby Lenora de Barros
Opening: this Wednesday (March 8), at 18 pm
New headquarters of Gomide & Co - Paulista Avenue, 2644 - Sao Paulo-SP)
Visitation: until May 13; Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 19 pm; Saturdays, from 11am to 17pm
Free admission
