CLAUDIO CRETTI: QUIMERAS

Claudio Cretti presents “QUIMERAS,” his sixth solo exhibition at Galeria Marilia Razuk, on May 2, showing twenty new drawings and eleven sculptures.

Quimeras, or Chimeras in English, are heterogeneous and often disconcerting combinations of several objects. According to Tadeu Chiarelli, the apparent instability brings to the viewer’s mind works related to the Italian Arte Povera and the American Post-Minimalism.

The sculptures were built through non-predictable articulations of objects, such as conductor’s batons, violin bows, objects used to clean wind instruments and musical articles connected to pipes, blowpipes, wood, rubber, stones, among other materials.

The artist has been collecting popular and indigenous artifacts for over two decades and connects them to objects found in musical instrument stores in Pinheiros, his neighborhood.

With an odd appearance, the graphic structure that characterizes the sculptures does not hinder de occasional shaping of plants and animals, which is also reflected in the series of drawings “kaaysá,” made during his one-month residency in the Atlantic Forest, in Boiçuganga. Quimeras constitutes an almost figurative attitude in Cretti’s recent work.

About the artist

Born in Belém, PA (Brazil), 1964. Lives and Works in Sao Paulo

Among his recent individual exhibitions, “Céu Tombado”, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, as an invited artist (2004); "Onde pedra a flora", Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo (2006); and “Luz de ouvido”, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte (2008), are worthy of special mention. Coisa Livre de Coisa, Galeria Marilia Razuk, São Paulo (2011); Pandora, site specific at Palácio das Artes, São Paulo (2013); A Pino, performance at RedBull Station, São Paulo (2014). 

Cretti participated in collective exhibitions held at such prestigious venues as the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, MAM SP [São Paulo Museum of Modern Art] and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, among others. In 2004, TV Cultura and the SESI-SENAC organization filmed a documentary about his production for the “O mundo da Arte” [“The World of Art”] series. The artist also works as a professor and researcher. In 2009, he was invited by the Galeria Marilia Razuk to conceive and organize the collective exhibition “Desenhar Lugares”. That same year, he is behind the publication of José Antonio da Silva, which is about his work and is aimed at the children’s market. In 2011, he curates the exhibition “Assim é, se lhe parece” at Paço das Artes, São Paulo.