Inhabiting Together
Views of the exhibition. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
Nara Roesler +info
For his first solo show in Brazil, Bunga presents new works made during his trip to this country, right before the exhibition, accompanied by new in-situ installations. It showcases key elements of his research, after more than 20 years expanding on the possibilities of painting and forging close relationships with architecture, installation, video, and performance.
In a polarized and fractured world, Bunga invites us to imagine a world in which we can Inhabit Together. Since the beginning of his career, the artist has explored architecture, as well as the ideas of home and domesticity. In his view, architecture is not just a formalist experience, where form follows function. For him, spaces, enclosures, and structures are designed to house relationships between individuals and their subjectivities, memories, and feelings. From this perspective, the house is a privileged space for understanding the human and "living" aspect of architecture.
Another very relevant aspect of his practice is the use of materials of a transitory and ephemeral nature, such as cardboard and adhesive tape, which are widely used by the artist in installation works that form hybrid spaces, susceptible to being modified. For the gallery, the artist has proposed two works using the material: one in the showcase, which will be occupied by architectural structures made of cardboard; the other, based on the idea of the loss of geographical and social territories, is similar to Occupy, a recent installation done in 2020 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, in which cardboard boxes occupied a large part of the exhibition space and through which the public had to walk and cross to reach the other spaces.
Even in participatory, installation, and performance works, the pictorial element is almost always present. According to Bunga: "Painting is directly or indirectly present in all my work. It is the basis of my thinking, a multifaceted place full of layers, perspectives and smells". This process is evident in the displayed works, produced in Brazil, in which the artist makes use of overlays of found packaging, beeswax, leaves of local vegetation, and acrylic paint on plywood.
The colors he uses in his works, although bright and vibrant, are discontinuous and crackled, evoking transience, which is deeply related to nature and the human experience, both of which are transitory. The artist inscribes layers of paint on collected carpets and local fabrics, which end up forming not only new textures, but also shapes that resemble maps and cartographies, which raises questions related to territoriality and belonging, which are both recurrent in the artist's research, as well as sculptural and installation works that make use of pieces of furniture.
You can read the curatorial text written by Ivo Mesquita clicking here.
Views of the exhibition. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
WORKS
Top left: New maps #8, 2023. PVC glue and latex paint on carpet. 150 x 59 in. Top right : Detail of New maps #8, 2023. Bottom left: Silla castigada #3, 2023. PVA glue and latex paint on chair. 88 x 46 x 48 cm. Bottom right: Free Standing Painting #61, 2023. PVC glue and latex paint on blanket 9 x 50 x 40 cm. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
Top: Landscape #9, 2023. Beeswax, PVA glue, latex paint and dry leafs on plywood. 204 x 153 x 5 cm each. Bottom: Landscape #9 details. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
Left: Construcción pictórica. Naturaleza #14, 2023. PVA glue, latex paint and dry leafs on plywood. 202 x 152,5 x 7 cm. Right: Construcción pictórica. Naturaleza #14 detail. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
Left: Mutation, Andean Architecture, 2024. Pencil on tracing paper, tape and C-print. 31,5 x 21 cm. Right: Mutation, Andean Architecture, 2024. Pencil on tracing paper, tape and C-print. 31 x 21 cm.
Top: New maps #6, 2023. PVC glue and latex paint on rug. 291 x 203 x 3 cm . Bottom left: New maps #5, 2023. PVC glue and latex paint on rug.152 x 95 x 3 cm. Bottom right: New maps #6 detail. Photos: Flavio Freire. Courtesy Nara Roesler.
PROCESS
A look into the montage of the exhibition at the gallery.
Bunga talks about his process as an artist and the making of some of the displayed works.
Artist’s studio at São Paulo, 2023.
2024. São Paulo, Brazil.
