Nuno Ramos: Houyhnhnms

With more than twenty pieces spread throughout the fourth floor of Estação Pinacoteca, Houyhnhms, Nuno Ramos’ (b. 1960, São Paulo) solo show, comprises large-scale paintings, reliefs, drawings, and sculptures, all of which have been produced over a nine-month period. Except for “Cavaloporpierrô”, already showcased in 2014 at Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, all the works are on exhibition for the first time.

The five paintings of this ensemble take back the massive usage of Vaseline as basis for the colours, a procedure that Nuno Ramos invented in the late 1980s and left aside early in the following decade. The show is completed with four reliefs and seven drawings. Made with metal plates and tubes along with different fabrics, plastic materials, and oil paint on wood, the reliefs present three-dimensional elements that elongate or contrast the movements suggested by the painting. The drawings, by their turn, compose a series dedicated to the god of metamorphosis Proteus, as each one of them has embossed the name of one of the transformations he went through on the book IV of the Odyssey.

The exhibition also presents sculptures as “CavaloporPierrô” and
“Casaporarroz”, in addition to reproductions of such works cast in bronze and aluminum, as well as videos directed by Nuno Ramos and Eduardo Climachauska (b. 1958, São Paulo). The artist thinks of both sculptures as ‘gifts’, an anthropological concept developed by Marcel Mauss purporting to approach non-profit exchanges in so-called archaic societies. According to the artist, “it is some sort of mad exchange, just as this exhibition, which is precisely an exchange of elements that are not necessarily equivalent among themselves. Works that, when in dialogue with each other, suggest an accumulation of meanings”.

Nuno Ramos works with painting, drawing, sculpture, writing, cinema, set design, and songwriting. He started painting in 1984, when he first joined the group of artists of the Casa 7 studio. Ever since, he has been regularly showcasing his work in Brazil and abroad. He was the artist representing the Brazilian pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 1995, and also participated in the 1985, 1989, 1994, and 2010 editions of the São Paulo Art Biennial.