James Kudo: Epítome da Paisagem

Epítome da Paisagem [Landscape’s Epitome] gathers recent works on acrylic on canvas by James Kudo (b. 1967, Pereira Barreto, Brazil).

According to Jorge Emanuel Espinho, who signs the exhibition’s text, two historical events lie on the formal origin of this exhibition: at the one hand, the fire that devoured the collection of MAM Rio on July 1978, destructing 80 works by Uruguayan artist Joaquim Torres Garcia (1874 – 1949, Montevideo), a major influence on Kudo’s production; on the other, the 1990 flooding, caused by an accident at the Três Irmãos hydroelectric power plant, that engulfed Novo Oriente, a city built by Japanese immigrants on the early 20th century, including the house of Kudo’s grandfather, where he had lived as a child.

For the writer, dichotomies between appearance and essence, memory and reality, artifice and nature, are in the center of the artists production, of a painting that appears to be collage and yet mimics nature, that deploys simultaneously ironic and symbolic, decorative and oneiric, plastic and figurative elements.