Gal Oppido and Akira Cravo

Galeria Lume opens, simultaneously, two solo shows: Gal Oppido Sentidos da Pele and Akira Cravo A Bahia e seus sentidos, curated by the artists themselves, sponsored by Tanqueray Gin. On Sentidos da Pele, Gal Oppido features 32 works where the essays explore the human body as a generating source of meanings when under external interference, whether allegorical, surgical, or behavioral. In the records of the series A Bahia e seus sentidos of Akira Cravo, the 14 photographs show the “poetry” of Bahia, which surpasses and defies paradigm, depicting beautiful and different people.

Gal Oppido in this show represents his works of the skin – the largest human organ that translates into its topography what the body wants – as a basic element that stresses man’s ability to “transform the matter and how this action transforms his body.” Seeking to explore different patterns and their identities, the artist is looking for peculiarities emanating from them as space, light and chromatics and from these premises, representing the pair that generates the works, Gal determines his media – photography, drawing, performances or kinetic images. One of the highlights of Sentidos da Pele are glass sculptural pieces forming two vitreopercussive works that create sounds when there’s a contact between performer and crystal pendants. For the artist, “the authorial demonstration that uses image as support and some questioning and concerns from its issuer, requires the complicity between form and content, without limitations that constrains its aesthetic object, leading the technique and its instruments towards the integrity of the speech”.

In his first solo exhibition at Lume, Akira Cravo shows 14 photographs of the unprecedented series A Bahia e seus Sentidos building a reliable poetic vision of the people of Bahia, their belief in the sacred and profane, street festivals, religion, syncretism between Candomble and Catholicism and especially in the light, which according to the artist, you can only find in Bahia.

The conceptual proposal of Akira Cravo is to enable a closer contact with the magical universe that reveals the ancient Bahia, a naturally beautiful people that conveys poetry in their eyes, a spontaneous vanity, the beauty of the scenery and with special emphasis on the people. “Bahia full of mysteries, myths and meanings”, he says. The sensitivity of the artist to portray his characters comes from his search for the beauty of the basics. To express his view on the obtained image, Akira Cravo creates a brand that endures through time. His concerns for the framed parameters are his signature. “On my images I bring the torso, body and face. Together and separate on pulsating, colourful, full of life, strength and faith”, says the artist.

With both shows, it is possible to depict the same sense of unique forms, transforming the art on endless possibilities for unique results. On the works presented you find either photographs “that are inspired by poetry, which surpasses any paradigm,” from Akira Cravo as well as art creations where “aesthetic creation excludes its a priori inclusion as an established order” of Gal Oppido. In this combination Galeria Lume maintains its proposal on providing the public with concepts, techniques and diverse styles, but complementary, to contribute to the cultural formation of the spectators.