RAFAEL CARNEIRO, De la Fabrique à l'Atelier
From the Factory to the Workshop
April 11 - May 10, 2025
Molière Space
40 Richelieu Street,
75001 Paris,
Rafael Carneiro, Balthus-chiclete, 2020, Oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm
The exhibition aims to retrace 20 years of production by the painter Rafael Carneiro, a major figure in the Brazilian contemporary art scene. On the occasion of the Year of Brazil in France, the exhibition will be held at Espace Molière from April 11 to May 10, 2025. Curator Leonel Kaz explores the relationships between territory and matter, in an exhibition marked by the most radical pictorial transitions. This painting with a photographic obsession is carried away over the years by the saturation of pigments from Brazilian lands.
Rafael Carneiro's paintings are distinguished by the great technical rigor he imposes. He has long transposed photographs onto canvas, in a process associated with photorealism. The artist has painted in series, digital images found online and often from videos. His paintings imitate computer monitor colors, in an aesthetic that oscillates between the real and the virtual and questions the nature of the image in the digital age. Rafael Carneiro has gradually begun to break up the integrity of his images and to multiply the scenes and subjects introduced. These juxtapositions of mixed images often come from popular imagery and reveal his interest in the inexhaustible bases of images. These new compositions form imaginary sets that are almost surrealist and close to the aesthetics of collages. Little by little, his figures dissipate into fields of bright colors, to the point of reaching abstraction. His paintings become true chromatic explosions. This turning point in his practice was accompanied by his research into making his own paints from natural pigments.
Rafael Carneiro, Tronco, 2024, oil on canvas, 150 x 260 cm
In 2020, Rafael Carneiro and artist Bruno Dunley founded Joules & Joules, their brand of artisanal paints produced from Brazilian pigments. It is the first to produce professional oil paint in Latin America. Rafael Carneiro's works, more pigmented than ever, gain in materiality and texture thanks to the unique characteristics of the pigments they use. At the same time, the artist becomes aware of the long struggle of Brazilian artists throughout history, for access to quality materials and their dependence on imported, more expensive materials. With this factory, the two artists want to play a role in the autonomy of Brazilian artists. They approach many of them and accompany them; delighted to see the impact their paintings have on the work of these artists. For Rafael Carneiro: “As an artist, the factory and the workshop become one”. For him, it is a rereading of the history of art to which is combined a history of materials and their access.
The exhibition captures the movement of reappropriation of the Brazilian territory that Rafael Carneiro's painting accompanies and embodies. Leonel Kaz is recognized for his expertise in Brazilian culture, he is curator of contemporary art exhibitions such as those of Vik Muniz and the Boghici and Sattamini collections. He enriches the exhibition with a narrative that emphasizes the dialogue between the painter's approach and the historical and sociocultural context of Brazil. More than a retrospective, it is a tribute to the beauty and resilience of the Brazilian territory, expressed through the eye and technique of Rafael Carneiro.