Cassina Projects is pleased to present Star of a Hero, the second solo show by Gustavo Nazareno (*1994, Minas Gerais – BR) with the gallery.
Setting the artist latest body of work against the imposing architecture of the upper floor of the gallery, the exhibition freely references the homonymous painting made in 1936 by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), legendary figure whose studies spanned anthropology, ethnography, occultism, archaeology, theosophy alongside art and painting across 19th and 20th century.
Religious and artistic influences go hand in hand throughout the show as Nazareno maps out a visual storyline of his spiritual and creative unearthing. Conceived of as offering to the pantheon of Orishas which the artist devotes his practice to, the paintings on display encompass landscapes, hybrid figures, animals and flowers shedding a non-hierarchical light over Nazareno's vast painterly repertoire.
Vacillating between the mystical and the allegorical, Nazareno's approach to painting is entrenched in a worldview distinct to the rationalistic, secular and scientific values informed by Western cultural imprinting. His possessed takes on traditional canons flirt with occultism and spiritism to resurrect ancient belief systems and lapsed folklore.
Fluid brushstrokes and cinematic takes reveal elements of Renaissance portraiture and religious traditional painting as sumptuous fabrics draped around the figures instil a hieratic aura to the exhibition. Through the enigmatic light-and-shadow play, binary notions, such as sacred and profane, life and death, human and nature, body and soul, dance a wild tango across his canvases embracing a liminal vision of our earthly experience.
Crucial to Nazareno's practice and experience at large, the spiritual and the aesthetic braided together generate a galvanizing force. Fulgor that traverses this atomized time dimension.
