The current exhibition at Brasilea Foundation in Basel (Switzerland) features the Brazilian artist Armarinhos Teixeira, who was born and raised in São Paulo. Teixeira’s art is rooted and characterized by this huge metropolis. For his works, Armarinhos Teixeira uses raw materials from industrial production, such as nylon, leather cords, steel cords and polyester. His artworks hang, hover, lie, flow across borders and adapt in shape and size to the given space. Armarinhos Teixeira creates his works in the context of the location. For his exhibition at Brasilea Foundation, the artist processed a ton of material, a carrier of nylon cord from tire production, to about 20 art works on site. The exhibition is titled Morfología Oblíqua and runs until November 10, 2016. A trilingual catalog will be published in German, English and Portuguese for this exhibition.
Armarinhos Teixeira: Morfología Oblíqua / Brasilea Foundation, Basel (Switzerland). Vernissage, September 22, 2016.
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Exhibition text:
On 22 September 2016, the Brasilea Foundation opens the exhibition of the Brazilian artist “Armarinhos Teixeira” who was born and raised in São Paulo. His art is deeply rooted and characterized by this huge metropolis; He is a true child of his everyday surroundings amid the construction industry and he uses raw materials from industrial production, such as nylon, leather cords, steel cords and polyester. His artworks hang, hover, lie, flow across borders and adapt in shape and size to the given space. From originally coarse materials, he forms perfectly shaped works that represent a connection between urban and rural life. The colors of his majestic installations represent the brown earth of Brazil.
In his works, Armarinhos Teixeira studies meticulously the morphology of different objects, which he finds in the city, in the woods and in the barren landscape in order to create new constructs in a contemporary context. This is the starting point from which he oversizes his sculptures, installations and pictures and questions the actual medium through its transformation into abstraction. Once the materiality has been taken away, the effect of the structures is immense. The formed material fills the void, the individual works correspond with each other and offer a mass of interwoven, seemingly endless rubber cords that blend smoothly and harmoniously into their surroundings.
Armarinhos Teixeira models the gross mass, which is delivered in 1.40 meters wide plastic strips, with his hands. He wraps, turns and connects, links, knots and glues the raw material meter by meter. The lightness of the material is his advantage in his works. Climbing gear such as carabiners connect the individual elements and anchor the works in walls, floors and ceilings. The finished works merge in the process to organic aesthetic forms that do not seem possible to make from the original material. Teixeira is a master of morphology. He uses the imagination of a child up to perfection and creates new dimensions out of those same materials that are so familiar to him giving them a new meaning.
In addition to five exhibitions in Europe and New York, he has been exhibited widely in his native country. His works are among others part of the collection of the MAM Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, the White Bos Manhattan in New York, and he is represented in the private collection of Ernesto Esposito in Italy.
Armarinhos Teixeira’s works are created in the context of the location. In a temporary studio, he processes a ton of material, a carrier of nylon cord from tire production to about 20 art works for the exhibition rooms of the Brasilea Foundation.
A trilingual catalog will be published in German, English and Portuguese for this exhibition.