RIO DE JANEIRO.- Fortes DAloia & Gabriel presents Férias para Sempre [Holidays Forever], a solo exhibition by Tiago Carneiro da Cunha.
Based in Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo-born painter brings together a new body of paintings, the exhibition unfolds through a series of enigmatic scenes in which states of leisure, pleasure, and repose become increasingly difficult to distinguish from images of collapse, disappearance, or death. Reclining figures appear throughout the works, stretched across beaches, gardens, streets, and interiors, their stillness suspended between vacation and catastrophe. At once humorous, unsettling and theatrical, the paintings resist fixed narratives, allowing moments of idleness, vulnerability, and absurdity to compose an open-ended tableau.
Produced within a recurring format that places every canvas at the same dimensions, emphasizing specific qualities through variations of a same framework, the paintings open onto expansive spaces that oscillate between landscape and stage set. The widescreen views in each of Carneiro da Cunhas compositions create a space in which foreground and background become equal protagonists. Leaning palm trees echo the postures of the figures, while dramatic sunsets, concentrated sources of light, and sharply constructed spatial effects lend many scenes an almost self-illuminated quality. The exhibition includes two distinct reinterpretations of the Pietà, placing one of the central motifs of classical art alongside images drawn from contemporary life. Throughout Férias para Sempre, idyllic and urban settings coexist, animated by references to Rio de Janeiros visual culture and everyday atmosphere. Together, these paintings explore the uneasy territory where spectacle and intimacy, humor and melancholy, eternal vacation and final rest begin to overlap.
Among the artists recent solo exhibitions are Maldita Comédia, Fortes DAloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brasil (2023); e Green Galaxy, Misako & Rosen, Tóquio, Japão (2022). He has also taken part in the group shows Terraphilia: Beyond the Human in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Espanha (2025); Estado Bruto, MAM Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021) and A iminência das poéticas 30ª Bienal de São Paulo (2012). O artista tem obras em importantes coleções públicas, tais como SFMoMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Estados Unidos; TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Madrid; Saatchi Collection, Londres, Reino Unido; MAM Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; MAR Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil e Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Estados Unidos.
The exhibition features a text by Gabriel Secchin.