BRUSSELS.- veridical shadows, or the unfoldings of a deceptive physicality, the first exhibition by Daniel de Paula at the new Brussels space of
Galeria Jaqueline Martins, juxtaposes a variety of objects, including sculptures, a museological artifact on loan from the collection of the Centre Céramique in Maastricht, collages, and a video installation, in attempt to give continuation to the artist’s critical investigations upon the abstract forces within capitalism that produce infrastructural space and reproduce violent social relations.
The show’s title itself, veridical shadows, or the unfoldings of a deceptive physicality, alludes to two entwined realities — the material reality that surrounds us, and an opaque phantasmagorical structure, informed by the omnipresence of labor and the production of value in our society, and which is indissociable from materiality itself. de Paula’s works grasp such duality by way of artistic maneuvers such as the appropriation of carefully sought for contextual objects and images, as well as by means of interventions into mechanisms of economic transaction and exchange of his very own work.
In this exhibition the artist carefully sourced and manipulated infrastructural drone inspection footages, geological specimens, a historically significant industrial museological artifact, recovered submarine telecommunications cable systems, and advertisement ephemera, in order to establish a singular updated conceptual vocabulary, activated through such wide range of materials, and capable of giving new meaning to a critique of power dynamics and structures of social domination.
Simultaneously, de Paula also highlights the limits, contradictions, and implications of his investigations upon economic and ideological systems — through a self-critical posture aware of the commodification of his own work — by means of strategies such as the act of selling the shadow of an object, and, more explicitly, by way of the selection of a detail from his recent wristwatch magazine advertisement collages as the accompanying image to the exhibition’s press release, thus utilizing a preexisting advertisement as the advertisement for his own exhibition, reiterating the fact that art plays an equal part in a world where everything is for sale, regardless of its critical content.
Daniel de Paula (Boston, USA, 1987)
Lives and works between Amsterdam, Netherlands and São Paulo, Brazil.
Recent solo exhibitions by Daniel de Paula include and materiality becomes nothing but a mere representation of a structure of dominance, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam (2020), estrutura insuperável, Kunsthal Gent, Belgium (2019), the control of things over subjects is the control of subjects over themselves, Galeria Francesca Minini, Milan (2019), the conductive form of dominant flows, Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo (2017); testemunho, Galeria Leme, São Paulo (2015) and objetos de mobilidade, ações de permanência, White Cube Gallery, São Paulo (2014).
Since 2020, Daniel de Paula has been supported by the Mondriaan Fund (Netherlands).
Recent art residencies include: De Fabriek, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2019), Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands (2018) and FLACC, Genk, Belgium (2016).
Daniel de Paula works have also been included in recent institutional exhibitions such as Repose, Arts Club of Chicago (2020), Brasile. Il coltello nella carne, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2018), Matriz do Tempo Real, MAC, São Paulo (2018); Avenida Paulista, MASP, São Paulo (2017); Metrópole: Experiência Paulistana, Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo (2017).
