Exhibition

Nuno Ramos: fodasefoice - Gallery 32

The Embassy of Brazil in London proudly presents Gallery 32’s second exhibition this year: fodasefoice, Nuno Ramos’ first solo show in the UK.

fodasefoice is the title of a group of works by Ramos, which comprise a wide variety of media: sculpture, drawing and performance. Nuno Ramos has been working on this series for a number of years, and the exhibition at Gallery 32 will include a group of especially commissioned large-scale sculptures and a video.

Resulting from simple shapes that relate closely to Brazilian Constructivism, the works in this series are infused with a symbolic charge (the sickle, a symbol of death) and yet retain their basic geometric structure. Bearing its origin in drawing, the shape of the sickle was reworked into glass sculptures, whilst the meaning of the noun ‘foice’ (sickle) was presented in a performance that involved two sound speakers, two actresses, and a large heap of hay. Thus, both of the elements that are always present in Ramos’ work – the physical body, or the matter (present in the sculptures), and meaning, or the name (which commands the performance) – seem to be dealt with side by side in this exhibition.

The sculptures, which are the main feature of this exhibition, are two giant glass sickles, leant on the wall and pierced by their own handles, which here take the shape of large glass tubes. These tubes are filled with liquids that are charged with an antagonic symbolism – petroleum and Coca-Cola. The liquids are circulated around the room by a pump that mixes them, dissolving their difference whilst they move through the sickles.

In the performance, which appears here as a video, two actresses stand on sound speakers and reap, in slow motion, a giant heap of hay which lays in front of them, while the words ‘foda-se’ (fuck you) and ‘foice’ (sickle) are sounded. It is important to point out that ‘foice’ (sickle) and ‘foi-se’ (has gone) are homophones in Portuguese. The work, therefore, acquires a new meaning – the ridding of something which has gone, in an exorcising ritual of both death and the past.

Nuno Ramos was born in São Paulo in 1960, where he lives and works. In 1982, he graduated in Philosophy from USP (University of São Paulo). The artist has participated in various group exhibitions: the Venice, São Paulo, Havana and Mercosul Biennials; MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York; MAC-USP (Museum of Contemporary Art), São Paulo; MAM (Museum of Modern Art), São Paulo; MAM (Museum of Modern Art), Rio de Janeiro; Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasília
and Rio de Janeiro; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Ramos has had solo exhibitions in museums and art galleries in Brazil and abroad: MAM (Museum of Modern Art), Rio de Janeiro; Fundação Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro; Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro; MAM (Museum of Modern Art), São Paulo; Funarte, Belo Horizonte; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasília and São Paulo; Centro Cultural São Paulo; Galeria Anita Schwartz, Rio de Janeiro; Galeria Matias Brotas, Vitória; Silvia Cintra Galeria de Arte, Rio de Janeiro; Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo; Galeria Camargo Vilaça, São Paulo; Galeria Bernardo Marques, Lisbon; Brooke Alexander Art Gallery, New York and Pulitzer Art Gallery, Amsterdam.

In 2007, Ramos won the Grand Award from the Barnett Newton Foundation; he is also a writer and was awarded the Portugal Telecom prize in 2008 for his book Ó.