FLASSANS-SUR-ISSOLE.- As part of the Brazil - France 2025 cross-season, the Commanderie de Peyrassol will present a monographic exhibition by Jonathas de Andrade (born in Maceió in 1982), a major artist on the Brazilian art scene who represented his country at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.The exhibition offers a reading of the artist's work, taking shape in his approach to nature and territories, revealing the poetic force that runs through his practice. In a minimalist atmosphere, the exhibition echoes the contemporary issues and reflections defined as the thematic axes of the Brazil - France 2025 season, notably climate and ecological transition.

At the heart of the exhibition, the two videos O Peixe (2016) and Nó na garganta (2022) form a dialogue on the relationship between man and animal, sometimes powerful, sometimes vulnerable. With tenderness visible at the same time as death or danger, and fear coexisting with sensuality, the artist takes the viewer on a journey of open, free reflection on the coexistence of living forms. By depicting a world of animals and plants with little space left untouched by human activity, Jonathas de Andrade offers an allegorical vision of this same world, where living things persist and resist. In this way, between invasion and conflict, destruction and survival, the ways of inhabiting the world are poetically revealed, demonstrating that alongside an omnipresent destructive tendency, creation, freedom and desire survive. Jonathas de Andrade's work is based on historical, textual and photographic research, from which he produces installations, sculptures, videos and performances.

These works seem to reveal the ambiguity of the social, political, cultural and ideological realities of the contemporary world. Between violence and love, trust and fear, threat and promise, the cohabitation of kingdoms and affects and the sharing of territories are the subjects of an exhibition designed for a place where the environment is at the heart of the discussion.

THE COMMANDERIE DE PEYRASSOL, A PRIVATE ART GALLERY CELEBRATING BRAZIL

Philippe Austruy, owner of the Commanderie de Peyrassol, was keen to welcome an artist from this country, to which he is very attached, to the village of Prainha, south of Fortaleza in the north-east of the country, where he is preparing to open the ‘Centro do Lou’ (named after his youngest daughter), a centre dedicated to local arts for children aged 4 to 12.

The sunny personality of Jonathas de Andrade, also from the north-east of Brazil, and his work rooted in his native land, were an obvious choice for Philippe Austruy. It was a choice confirmed by their meeting at the Commanderie de Peyrassol in 2024, which gave Jonathas the opportunity to discover not only this 850-hectare estate, which harmoniously blends art and vineyards, but also Provence and its undeniable charm.

JONATHAS DE ANDRADE

Jonathas de Andrade was born in Maceió in 1982 and lives in the north-east of Brazil, in Recife, a coastal city rich in contrasts, where old colonial buildings rub shoulders with modern skyscrapers and where the failure of the tropical modernist utopia is a tangible reality.

He has had solo exhibitions in institutions such as The Power Plant (Toronto, Canada), The New Museum (New York, USA), MASP (São Paulo, Brazil) and the CRAC Alsace in 2022, Olho-Faísca (Œil-Flamme) having been Jonathas de Andrade's first solo institutional exhibition in France and his first major exhibition in Europe.