PARIS.- Xippas for the first time in its Parisian space, opened an exhibition by Brazilian artist Santídio Pereira. The show will bring together a selection of recent works, including monumental woodcut prints, wooden objects and monotypes.
Over the past five years, the artist has focused on the representation of tropical plants and Brazilian landscapes. Santídio Pereira’s artistic project reclaims and revitalizes the significant tradition of Brazilian woodcut, carried by renown artists such as Oswaldo Goeldi, Manoel Messias and Anna Maria Maiolino. These artists share a common approach where the woodcut technique is used to depict images of contingent reality within a refine and minimal aesthetic.
In this sense, the formal synthesis enabled by the woodcut technique connects Santídio Pereira’s work to the scientific tradition of botanical illustrations (which began to develop in the 6th century) where plant species are typically placed at the center of the page on a neutral background.
In this exhibition, the viewer can find representations of bromeliads (bromeliaceae), tropical plants native to the South American continent, characterized by stemless leaves, narrow rosettes and a deep calyx. Until the age of 8, the artist lived in the state of Piauí in Brazil, where a particular biome called caatinga is found, defined by a semi-arid tropical climate. This ecosystem is extremely rich in fauna and flora, with a prevalence of cacti and bromeliads. In Santídio Pereira’s work, nature and landscape are depicted both as fragile emblems in constant danger and as memories of his childhood. A childhood spent in permanent contact with nature constitutes a subtle space of nostalgia, similar to the homeland and identity that define one as an individual.
Santídio Pereira was born in 1996 in Curral Comprido, Estado do Piauí, Brazil. He lives and works in Sao Paulo.
Santídio Pereira’s work refers to his own memories and perceptions of nature of his home country. Alluding to its extremely rich vegetation, animal world and landscapes, it evokes a sensation of “grandeur of nature” and inevitably rises questions of the place and role of the human being in the environment.
Born in Curral Comprido, a small village in the northeast of Brazil, Santídio Pereira migrated to São Paulo as a child and soon joined Instituto Acaia, a private non-profit NGO that assists children and adolescents, where he also worked. It was at the age of eight, through the workshops at Ateliescola Acaia, that Santídio began his artistic practice. The images from personal memories, preserved since his childhood and
referring both to his homeland and to his later experiences, serve today as guidelines in his work.
The woodcut technique is one of the artist’s main medium that he has developed in his own working method, “incision, cut and fitting” as he calls it, consisting of a combination of several cut out layers of wooden panels, intertwining in a jigsaw puzzle. Over time, he started making woodcut prints on paper and it became one of the main directions of Santídio’s practice, that has been guiding his artistic production up to today.
He participated in numerous exhibitions at major Brazilian and international institutions such as Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; Power Station of Art in Shanghai; and recently Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil dedicated him a personal exhibition. His work is currently presented by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain at Triennale Milano, Italy.
His work is part of renown collections such as the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, USA; SESC Art Collection, São Paulo; Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France.
Xippas Paris
Santídio Pereira
October 18th, 2023 - December 22nd, 2023
Curated by Manuel Neves
