Mano Penalva — Fountainhead

Salvador, Brazil

January 17- February 28, 2020

ARTIST STATEMENT

Mano Penalva documents the material culture, behavior changes and globalization processes. His artwork are deliberately nonrepresentational, allowing materials to dictate form and come together on their own. He holds a degree in Social Communication (PUC-RJ), where he also studied Social Sciences with an emphasis on Anthropology. He attended 6 years of free art courses at (EAV) Escola de Artes Visuais - Parque Lage - Rio de Janeiro.

The Mano Penalva process involves his interest in anthropology and cultural education, which materializes in this urgency to appropriate common articles found and purchased on the street, popular markets and travel to compose his own works. Thus, one can recognize a breakdown of frontiers into a globalized language proposed by the meeting of the materials used in the works, either in the appropriation of a national family iconography, or in the juxtaposition of it to other iconographies in different parts of the world, often subvert the values nd meanings and stitching social and philosophical discourses that are evidenced by the forms of created objects.

The artist explores the poetry obtained by the displacement of materials and objects from his everyday context, working with different media such as painting, photography, sculpture and installation. Its production includes appropriations, in which it develops a study of the common object inserted in the culture, realizing a long collection of articles found in the street and in popular markets. In creating the works, it subverts the value of everyday objects, proposing new aesthetic groupings based on the relationship of the retail sale strategies and their collection experiences.

His work brings reflections on the character of objects, how they transit the world, exchange relationships and trade agreements between countries. They acquire different layers of meanings when used by different cultures, impacting on the formation of the customs of a society. Mano emphasizes with his works the idea that the exponential proliferation of objects and images are not intended to train perception or consciousness, but insist on merging with them.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Website: www.manopenalva.com

Instagram: @ manopenalva

Facebook: www.facebook.com/manopenalva

Gallery: https://www.centralgaleria.com/artistas#/manopenalva/ (gallery São Paulo)

http://www.portasvilaseca.com.br/br/artistas/mano-penalva/ (Gallery Rio de Janeiro)