Dorothy Circus Gallery is proud to present METAFORAMORFOSES, the first solo exhibition in Italy by the Brazilian artist Rafael Silveira (Paranaguà, 1978). The show will open exclusively at the gallery in Rome on 25th June 2020. It is with great pride and renewed enthusiasm that we share with you the theme of Silveira’s exhibition, presenting 12 brand new oil paintings which, with a rich symbology and joyful colours typical of South American culture, invite us to become resilient and discover the new opportunities that come with change. The theme of the metamorphosis, elaborated by Silveira way before the current pandemic emergency, becomes now even more significant and related and extremely current. Indeed, as Silveira himself stated months ago:
“There’s a gap between what happens around you and how you react to it. Mind the gap” – Rafael Silveira
METAFORAMORFOSES is in fact an invented word, fruit of the artist’s poetics, a fusion between the Portuguese words “metafora” and “metamorfosi”, and refers to the symbolic mutations experienced by Silveira’s characters in surreal a journey that leads the visitor to discover personal cathartic path. The artist believes that life continuously speaks to us with signs that we must interpret. The same happens to the mysterious psychological narratives of his paintings which evolve into a mix of spiritual and cultural references in harmony with the bespoke hand-carved frames that Silveira creates and paints for each painting. For this new body of work Silveira has worked a lot on bespoke carved frames that are extremely detailedand in harmony with the theme and the paintings themselves, allowing us to particularly direct our attention to the amazing details of his handcrafted frames. Following numerous international successes, such as the exhibition at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in 2014, with Metaforamorfoses the artist introduces also a reflection dedicated to the theme of fatherhood and the great existential change following the birth of his firstborn. Silveira points out that “as happens to butterflies, our lives too undergo changes in time. Some of these movements, then, are able to change our destinies forever”. It is through these emblematic words – which refer to the work A Big Change in your Life – that we enter the cathartic spirit of the exhibition at the Dorothy Circus Gallery Rome.This exhibition is the next chapter of the program The Year of Love. The feeling of Love is represented in the colourful and surreal canvases of the Brazilian painter, whose with carnival spirit and his expression of a strong spirituality, close to themes of reincarnation, catharsis, and liberation of the soul, are all burst out from his works. The multiple influences of the artist are clear from decades working in the industry of communications and the study of the history of art. We easily access through his striking drawings the common origins of an imaginary linked to Frida Kahlo as well as to the pure surrealism of Salvador Dali and Magritte up to great Masters such as Arcimboldo. On the other hand, the cinematographic influences resonate with the modernity of Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino, David Lynch and Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman as well as Classic cartoons such as Ren & Stimpy, then inevitably passing through literary inspirations, inspired by “Le metamorfosi” by Kafka and “Eu”
by Augusto dos Anjos.
Metaforamorfoses is a journey that leads the visitor to discover the South American culture and the poignant – but radiant at the same time – stories by Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perfectly coherent with the changing soul of Silveira, we remember the phrase by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982:
“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves” (Gabriel García Márquez, Love at the Time of Cholera, 1985).Proposed on this occasion at the DCG Rome, his artworks are able to perfectly exalt the uniqueness of each individual, whose mind – according to the painter himself – is “a single microcosm and universe”. From Mind the Gap to Immersion, up to Aquarium of Bodily Fluids, Silveira is able to invite us in a unique experience of interior exploration, in a call to action that comes almost suffused because immediate and deep.
