Galeria Nara Roesler | New York is delighted to announce GNR Presents:, a multimedia collective show that brings together a wide range of works representing the gallery’s remarkable position as a leading Brazilian contemporary art gallery with 30 years of experience in the Global South, yet whose presence in the North spans barely two years. The exhibition encompasses the gallery’s twofold mission to promote Brazilian art abroad while actively contributing to the internationalization of the Brazilian art scene through a rigorous international program. A series of talks and workshops at the gallery and throughout New York City has been organized to accompany the exhibition.

GNR Presents: convenes a cross-generational group of artists, from the Global North and South, whose works reflect on formal concerns such as the role of color, spatiality, and the public. Presenting works by seminal Brazilian artists such as Hélio Oiticica, Sérgio Camargo, Lygia Clark, and Tunga, the exhibition also showcases works by key international artists who similarly experiment with space and perception, including Daniel Buren. In addition, it features works by young and up-and-coming artists who share these formal concerns, namely Bruno Dunley and Eduardo Navarro. While the former’s body of work considers the representational language inherent in painting, the latter’s participatory action projects activate the audience’s presence. GNR Presents: also subtly reflects on the concept of a Global North and South in its presentation of pieces by Latin American artists Vik Muniz and Alexandre Arrechea, who pay tribute to New York City in their depictions of iconic buildings including the Guggenheim Museum and the Chrysler Building.

Color extends as a thread throughout the exhibition, establishing a spatial and physical presence, which fosters corresponding relationships between works. While some artists visibly yield color on flat surfaces to reflect on form in space, others present similar strategies in three-dimensional fields. For instance, Hélio Oiticica’s paintings Metaesquema (1957–1958) and Lygia Clark’s Planos em Superficie Modulada (1957) are monochromatic sketches of geometric shapes that create an interplay between figure and background. These works challenge their own two-dimensionality by evoking a sense of instability, movement (as in Oiticica’s work), and depth (as in Clark’s.) Oiticica achieves these effects by partially applying a rhythmic “mirroring” strategy, whereby he replicates his patterns. Daniel Buren’s installation, Prisms and Mirros: High Reliefs (2017)follows this line of experimentation by seeking to enhance light and color through spatial arrangements, while going further by allowing the viewer and his space to become active participants in the work.

Another correspondence takes place between Abraham Palatnik’s Untitled (2016) and Tunga’s Untitled (1999), the latter of which pertains to the artist’s “Scalp” series. Both works test the cognitive capabilities of fragmented media, yet Palatnik accomplishes this by juxtaposing the pictorial potential of the wood with that of paint, while Tunga assembles pliable threads of brass so as to evoke hair held by combs. Also on display is Sérgio Camargo’s Untitled #268 (1970), whose white sculptural relief interacts with the minute systems in Marco Maggi’s Language in Residence (2016). While Camargo’s work straddles the polarity of surface and sculpture by allowing light to shine on the smooth forms that lie within the wood, Maggi’s reveals a system within minutely low reliefs.

Artists whose works are in the exhibition include: Abraham Palatnik, Alexandre Arrechea, Artur Lescher, Bruno Dunley, Cristina Canale, Daniel Buren, Eduardo Navarro, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Marco Maggi, Milton Machado, Sérgio Camargo, Tunga, Vik Muniz, Xavier Veilhan.