Beyond the Object by Gustavo Prata

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Exhibitions

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Monday, Jun 17

Exhibition “Beyond the Object” by Gustavo Prata at Karla Osorio Gallery in Brasília

Karla Osorio Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition “Beyond the Object,” the first solo exhibition by artist Gustavo Prata in Brasília. The show will be inaugurated on Saturday, May 18, with an exclusive brunch at the gallery and its gardens. Curated by Allan Yzumizawa, the exhibition features 27 works, most of them new, in various techniques such as drawing, collage, installation, objects, and aluminum sculptures.

About the Exhibition – Beyond the object

“Beyond the Object” gathers nearly 30 works, most of them new, by the artist in various techniques such as drawing, collage, installation, objects, and aluminum sculptures. These works are part of research developed by the artist from São Paulo, resulting from investigations and residency work at the gallery in Brasília, between April and May 2024. The residency and creative process were critically accompanied by Allan Yzumizawa, who curated the exhibition.

About the artist – Gustavo Prata

Visual artist Gustavo Prata lived and grew up in São Paulo, immersed in the urban flows that invade his daily life. Such experiences do not directly reflect the city but perhaps its symptoms; many of his productions do not seek to represent the monotony of straight and geometric lines found in the landscape’s corners but to attribute spirits to everyday objects as a counterargument to the sensations experienced in the city. Prata recognizes the complexity of the marketing industry, which constructs both material and symbolic desires in the collective imagination. His works reflect this understanding, exploring the impact of consumerism on our society. In works like Amálgama, the artist accumulates and tears product packaging, fragmenting logos into an abstract composition. This gesture not only questions our relationship with brands but also reveals how they infiltrate our subconscious, even when we are not directly engaged in consumption. In a way, it offers a dystopian perspective on our existence in the world. Another recurring element in his work is the accumulation of newspapers, which, despite their decline due to the rise of digital media (and predictions of their disappearance in 20 years), continue to represent a form of information consumption. The artist uses them to explore contemporary dynamics of how society operates notions of truth and post-truth in the era of smartphones and social media. Furthermore, his works often follow a modular logic, where everyday objects are transformed and serialized, amplifying their meaning and impact. This approach ensures his works never have a set end, always gaining dimension by adding more objects. Once this occurs, the almost human (or superhuman) scale offers an animistic aspect to the observer, making the objects appear to have life, soul, or spirit. Examples include sculptures executed with wires, where titles always invoke a proper name, such as Teofrastos (2024). The silver lines take organic forms, and their abstract composition always offers the opportunity to seek or even find human elements. This also happens in sculptures with interventions, such as the untitled work 2 (2019) from the Barnacle series, where we observe a table with its parts modified with paper pulp. These interventions in objects generate organic lines that, while presenting a deformation, create a closeness to a living organism. These aspects of deformation in the artist’s work announce a “predatory nature,” which metaphorically presents how consumer society operates in its contemporaneity. Contemplating Gustavo Prata’s body of work, we are immersed in his daily life filled with objects, urban movements, and relentless geometry. Amidst this landscape, Prata finds an escape: creating works that offer what the city often cannot provide—sinuous forms and organic elements. His relentless quest is to infuse life into the inanimate objects around him, granting them a soul, a state of animation that transcends their static nature. Allan Yzumizawa