André Terayama: Propositions

For his first solo show in Rio de Janeiro, André Terayama (b. 1989, São Paulo) presents a panorama of his last five years of production. Propositions features six works created between 2011 and 2015, including videos and photos.

The set of works reveal the artist’s interest in principles like weight, balance, volume, mass, sustenance, and space. Despite most usually connected to sculpture, Terayama investigate these ideas through photography and video, his media of choice to record the use of his own body as a tool to test these concepts.

In “Atlante” (2013), for instance, the body is tested in its relation to architecture. As in Greek mythology, when the titan Atlas was condemned to sustain the sky, the artist maintains himself balanced with the assistance of a doorframe, in a photograph print in a scale similar to reality. “Fúria Centrípeta” [Centripetal Fury] (2012), by its turn, records an action that starts with a thread tied to the floor on one end, and with a piece of charcoal on the other. The artist dislocates this structure, leaving an spiral trail in charcoal on the floor, a process that simultaneously flirts with performance, sculpture and drawing.