Starting its 2017 exhibition calendar, concurrently with a solo show by Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea, Galeria Nara Roesler | São Paulo presents Metrópole, a group show comprising 28 pieces by Alberto Baraya, Alice Miceli, Cao Guimarães, Hélio Oiticica, Isaac Julien, Lucia Koch, Marco Maggi, Marcos Chaves, Melanie Smith, Milton Machado, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Paulo Bruscky, Vik Muniz, and Virginia de Medeiros. Organized by the gallery’s art director Alexandra Garcia Waldman, the exhibition features these artists’ takes on the city and urban living, with its specificities, complexities, and adversities, from critical, creative, and poetic viewpoints.

Brasília, Belo Horizonte, New York, Santiago, Amsterdam, and Recife are some of the cities covered in the show. Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida portray the electrifying New York of the 70s in their short film Agrippina é Roma Manhattan (1972), whereas Milton Machado turns to the city’s automobiles in NY Cars (2016), and Vik Muniz looks to the skies for his Pictures of Clouds: 59th Bridge series (2002).

Whereas Cao Guimarães’ Brasília (2011) depicts the more urban, chaotic side of the Brazilian federal capital, Alberto Baraya of Colombia revisits the city and its landmarks through poetry in the photo series Estudos comparados modernistas (2010-2011). For the US-born Paul Ramirez Jonas, collective awareness is key to urban life, as his serigraph Assembly (Ghazi Stadium) (2013) implies. For his part, Paulo Bruscky dabbles in humor in the series Amsterdam erótica (1982), created during his time living in the Dutch capital. In a world where most of the population lives in cities, Metrópole shows how some artists in the last 40 years have viewed and journeyed through the places we inhabit.