Matheus Rocha Pitta

(Brazil) b.1980

Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro

Matheus Rocha Pitta likes to compare himself to an archeologist. Thru the articulation of photographs, video and sculpture the artist unburies images that were not previously visible – but that are active in the present.

In Taipei, Rocha Pitta is showing two works:

The word brasil originally meant a place of embers. In an attempt to bring this dramatic genealogy back to the surface, the artist went to Brasília (the mythical 20th-century Niemeyer planned capital of Brazil) to display and photograph pieces of meat  in the famous red dirt. Exposed under the excessive light of the midday summer sun, the boundaries of flesh and earth blur towards a red substance, both wound and crystal, geological and traumatic. 

Made especially for the Taipei Biennial, Assault is a series of concrete slabs investigating the nature of gestures. The rather unique concrete technique (based on cheap grave construction in Brazil) seems to freeze a delicate dialectical moment where advertising images are converted to a rather enigmatic, but no less political, end.

Matheus Rocha Pitta’s works have been included in the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010). His solo exhibitions include: Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2013); Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2011); Institut d’Art Contemporain, Lyon (2011); Dois Reais (“Two Reals”); Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (2012); Galeria Mendes Wood, São Paulo (2012); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); and Kunst Im Tunnel, Düsseldorf (2013). He was the recipient of the Illy Sustain Art Prize, Madrid (2008). His work is part of important public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, and the Castello di Rivoli, Turin.

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