AMERSFOORT.- Mundo Mágico (magical world) is a tribute to the gallery’s program, which captures the imagination Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo, as seen through the lens of twelve of its artists. They present a world in which reality is given a slight twist, causing the experience of it to transcend direct observation and feel ‘magical.’ A world with a soul. Recurring themes include landscape, identity, memory, and mythology, approached from a personal, critical, and sometimes spiritual perspective.

The exhibition gives a prominent place to Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, a self-taught artist from Belo Horizonte who lived from 1900 to 1995. His vision of the landscape is quite distinctive: realistic, naïve, and evocative all at once, with a certain detachment that ensures it is never a literal representation. Lorenzato is an ‘artist’s artist.’ It was the artists at the gallery who drew the gallery owners’ attention to him. His work exemplifies the delicate style of painting that predominates in the Mendes Wood DM program.

KAdE organized the exhibition in 2016 Soft Power Arte Brasil. The exhibition showcased Brazil’s socioeconomic context during the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games through the eyes of artists—a context that remained out of sight of the cameras covering the marketing-driven sports spectacle throughout the event. Representing Mendes Wood DM at Soft Power Arte Brasil were Lucas Arruda, Paulo Nazareth, and Paulo Nimer Pjota—artists who have since achieved international recognition, while the gallery itself has also gained increasing prominence.

Since 2016, Kunsthal KAdE has continued to closely follow Mendes Wood DM. Although it is a commercial enterprise—like any gallery—the entire program feels like a coherently curated selection, like an ‘exhibition’ spread across the many facets of artist offerings, trade show booths, and gallery and museum presentations. In *Mundo Mágico*, we showcase this value of the program.





The exhibition Mundo Mágico On view from June 6 through August 30, 2026, at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort

Participating artists: Lucas Arruda, 1983, BR | Julien Creuzet, 1986, FR | Sanam Khatibi, 1979, BE | Vojtěch Kovařík, 1993, CZ | Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, 1900–1995, BR | Paulo Nazareth, Old Man from Nak Borun, BR | Paulo Nimer Pjota, 1988, BR | Rosana Paulino, 1967, BR | Solange Pessoa, 1961, BR | Marcos Siqueira, 1989, BR | Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, 1977, ES | Rubem Valentim, 1922–1991, BR

Mendes Wood DM was founded in São Paulo in 2010 as a collaboration between Pedro Mendes, Matthew Wood, and Felipe Dmab, who is represented by the “DM” in the name.

According to the gallery, Mendes Wood DM was founded to ‘exhibit international and Brazilian artists in a context that fosters critical dialogue and the cross-pollination of ideas.’ Inspired by the belief that artistic practices broaden the scope of human action and have the power to change the world, the gallery cultivates a program based on conceptualism, political resistance, and intellectual challenge.

In 2017, Mendes Wood DM opened its first European exhibition space in Brussels. This was followed in 2022 by a gallery space in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood and, in 2023, by a location on the Place des Vosges in Paris’s Marais district. In 2022, an artist residency was established in an 18th-century building in the Hudson River Valley in Upstate New York.