ESTE FOCUS

Booth walkthrough with the artist
Vanderlei Lopes

In English, without translation.
Open to the public.

CURATORIAL VISION

For ESTE ARTE, Almeida & Dale proposes a solo presentation of works by Henrique Oliveira. The booth features a set of Oliveira’s recent works, including sculptures, wall-based objects, and paintings. In his practice, the artist employs materials originally destined for disposal—such as plywood, cardboard, and tree bark to create organically shaped pieces whose forms are echoed in his vibrant, fluid paintings. Both fantastical and unsettling, Oliveira’s vegetal organisms suggest forms of coexistence thatare at times symbiotic and at others parasitic between nature and the built environment. The presentation at ESTE includes the renowned Xilempasto and EXLP series of works, which fall in the threshold between painting and sculpture, mixing wood, papier-mâché, and paint, creating three-dimensional forms resembling living organisms such as tree trunks and roots or fragments of landscapes. The same liquid and living aspect stand out in his paintings, which combine various methods and techniques in colorful abstract compositions. The sculpture Conundrum, 2020, completes the showcase of Oliveira’s diverse practice. Moving between the fantastical and the organic, this selection sparks discussions about coexistence and tensions between humanity and nature, the passage of time, and the circularity that governs the natural world. The materiality of the works also provokes reflections on contemporary challenges posed by climate change.

BIO

Henrique Oliveira (b.1973, Brazil; lives and works in London) employs materials originally destined for disposal to create organic forms that suggest a symbiotic or parasitic coexistence between nature and the human-built world. Oliveira has held solo shows at Galeria Millan, São Paulo (2023, 2016, 2012); Kupfer, London (2022); Galerie Vallois, Paris (2022, 2015, 2011); Gifu Museum of Fine Arts (2018); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013). He has been featured in the Abu Dhabi Biennial (2024); Lagos Biennial (2024); Le Voyage à Nantes Festival (2024); Triennale Brugge (2021); XIII Bienal de Cuenca (2016); Bienal de São Paulo (2010); and the Mercosur Biennial (2009); and in group shows at QAGoma, Brisbane (2023); Palais Lille Beaux Arts (2022); Centro Pecci (2017); Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein (2017) and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015).

CURATORIAL VISION

Lila by Saint Clari Cemin is a stainless-steel sculpture based on a tetrahedron, one of the five Platonic solids. Its structure consists of four interconnected figures, each extending through paired tentacle-like forms that continue seamlessly into one another and create a continuous flow across all facets of the sculpture, transforming what initially appears as different forms into a single, dynamic organism. Despite this constant proximity of its curves and lines, each element maintains its autonomy, generating a tension between separation and continuity, individuality and unity. Produced in polished stainless steel, the work reflects and incorporates its surroundings, visually absorbing the environment and integrating it into its own movement. As light, space, and viewers become part of the work’s shifting appearance, the sculpture remains in a state of perpetual transformation, evoked in its title, the Hindu concept of Lila, a cosmic dance of Shiva: The divine play through which time, space, and matter continuously emerge and form the universe. This philosophical notion of coexistence informs the sculpture’s structure and perception, which ultimately manifest the distinct elements it’s comprised of as a unified whole.

BIO

Saint Clair Cemin (1951, Cruz Alta, Brazil) creates sculptures using various materials, such as bronze, steel, glass, and marble. Cemin also explores the intersections of his myriad references, which, in addition to art history, encompass philosophy, mythology, and literature. His works range from smooth and static surfaces to baroque or naturalistic renderings, dwelling on the dichotomies of movement and stillness, brightness and opacity, roughness and softness. Cemin has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Tobias Mueller Modern Art, Zurich, Switzerland (2025); Milan, São Paulo (2024); Basilea Foundation, Switzerland (2016); and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2009). He was honored at the 4th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre (2003) and has taken part in several group exhibitions, including the 22nd São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (1994); and Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1992). His work is part of several collections, such as Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan; Instituto Inhotim, Brazil; and Whitney Museum, USA.

ESTE FOCUS

Booth walkthrough with the artist
Vanderlei Lopes

In English, without translation.
Open to the public.

Date: January 5
Time: 6:50 pm
Venue: Pavilion VIK
Ruta 10, Km 182.5, José Ignacio

CURATORIAL VISION

For ESTE Arte, Almeida & Dale presents a solo by Vanderlei Lopes. The booth features six new works in which Lopes, for the first time, employs aluminum in his sculptures, which evoke flowing liquids, puddles, and everyday objects. With varied finishes, the metal surfaces are sometimes mirror-like—intensifying the illusion of water—sometimes darkened with patina, or painted to resemble ordinary objects and debris, such as cigarette butts, Styrofoam cups, and crumpled paper. In addition to these larger pieces, the presentation includes a piece made entirely of silver—a material echoed in the reflective quality of the aluminum—painted to resemble a sheet of paper bearing a satellite image of an inverted South America. Countering the material’s inherent value and adding contemporary political lens to a staple of Uruguaian art. Created specifically for the fair, the works engage with the site from historical and mythological perspectives, and with the coastal landscape where the fair takes place. Through a play of language and semiotics, Lopes’s sculptures reflect on the nature of the contemporary art object, its systems of circulation, and issues such as climate change, consumption, and Latin American politics and history—tensioning luxury and waste, rarity and ordinariness, beauty and decay.

BIO

Vanderlei Lopes (Brazilian, b. 1973) explores in his sculptural practice the intersections between artistic tradition, representation, and systems of circulation, often addressing the cultural and social processes that shape our perception of objects. His works are marked by an “indexical” quality: ordinary objects and ephemeral situations are cast or imprinted with almost photographic precision, generating frictions with the spaces they inhabit and drawing attention to temporality—oscillating between historical distance and immediate presence. Solo exhibitions include Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo (2017); Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2015); and MAM Rio de Janeiro (2014). He has also participated in the 22nd Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala (2021), the 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2009), and notable group shows at MuBE and Sesc 24 de Maio in São Paulo. His works are held in the collections of MAM São Paulo, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, MAC USP, MAR Rio de Janeiro, MAM Rio, Instituto Itaú Cultural, and Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, among others.

ESTE FOCUS

Túlio Pinto, Artist
In conversation with César Escandarani, CEO, Planet Partners

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
6:50 PM 7:30 PM
Pavilion VIK

BIO

Túlio Pinto (b. 1974, Brasília, Brazil) works and lives in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil. He has held several solo exhibitions, such as "Buraco no Céu" at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba, Brazil, in 2023; "Land Line" at Fondamenta Sant’Apollonia and Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Venice, Italy, in 2019; "Tres Tiempos" at Galeria Senda in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018; "Athar" at Galeria Piero Atchugarry in Garzón, Uruguay, in the same year; and "Onloaded" at the Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art in the USA in 2015.

Noteworthy groups show that Pinto has participated in the 13th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2022; and "Manifesta" in Lyon, France, in 2021. His work is part of the collection of the Marta Herford Museum, Germany; Fundación Pablo Atchugarry, Manantiales, Uruguay; Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, Madrid, Spain; Piramidón, Centre d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná, Brazil; Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; National Museum of Brasília, Brazil; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil; among others.

CURATORIAL

For its first participation in ESTE Arte, Millan presents a selection of works by Túlio Pinto. Building on the debates initiated by minimalism and Brazilian constructive art, Pinto's work uniquely engages with the concepts of harmony, balance, and ephemerality, positioning him among the leading Brazilian sculptors of today. The works in the “Cumplicidade” series, created with steel blocks or bars and blown glass bubbles, are organized into precise arrangements of balance and the interplay of forces that sustain themselves autonomously. These pieces challenge assumptions and oppositions between fragility and resistance, lightness and weight, acting as catalysts for reflections on ephemerality and transformation surrounding the relationship between bodies and space.

According to architect and curator Guilherme Wisnik, “Túlio Pinto blends something of Fred Sandback’s constructivist and surrealist lightness with the empty, anodyne volumes of Sol LeWitt, forging his path between abstraction and figuration, pendulating in the air as if it were a seesaw of stones.” These operations, understood by the artist as a “performance of materials,” result in a precise organization of the components that make up the works—considering the properties and antagonisms of the materials, which allow the pieces to remain static.