Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition "Between the Sea, the River, and the Stone" on February 11, 2025, at 6:00 PM. The exhibition features works by Pernambuco-based artist Marcelo Silveira in his first solo show in the city. The works will occupy the ground floor and the double-height wall beneath the skylight at Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro, offering the public a comprehensive look at the artist's production, who has established himself as a major figure in the contemporary scene over his 40-year career. On the day of the opening, at 7:00 PM, there will be a guided tour of the exhibition with Marcelo Silveira and Daniela Name, author of the critical text.
The 17 works that make up Marcelo Silveira's solo exhibition were selected by the artist in collaboration with the Nara Roesler curatorial team to emphasize his process and research, which are characterized by meticulous craftsmanship and the concept of collecting—primarily using wood, magazines, and horsehair. The show presents two previously unseen works from the "Bolofotes" series (2023 and 2024)—a word pronounced with a closed "o," used in northeastern Brazil to describe something misshapen, "almost as if you put three eggs in a sock, which takes shape with every movement," the artist explains. "It is a practice of organizing space, of building as I go. I do a lot of wearing down on the wood, and in this series, for the first time, I am adding and wearing down. It is an extension of the practice of collecting, where you gather things, organize them, and compact them."
In the three works from the "Sementes" (Seeds) series (2024) included in the show, the artist creates small volumes of cajacatinga wood that resemble seeds, which are then grouped into a single volume. "It is the result of experiments I conducted with wood scraps. The first seed was the result of joining things that had been forgotten. In the second, I added something more, and the third was entirely new. It is incredibly labor-intensive to make," the artist comments with a laugh. "The seed is the origin; it is responsible for the multiplication of the species. It is the sprouting, and when one returns to the origin—which I am doing all the time—to the canvas, to the research on the seeds of the wood I have used for many years. I use the roots, the scraps, and I want these trees to exist again, so that I can find these trees with greater frequency, with more regularity. The seeds are in my head," he says.
