INSOMNIA / Claudio Ethos
FELIZES / Anderson Resende
December 4-31, 2008
Curated by Gabe Scott

INSOMNIA: Brazilian Street Surrealist Claudio Ethos

San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery presents the United Sates debut of Brazil’s Claudio Ethos with great enthusiasm as the artist comes off of sold out shows in Europe and South America. While a stop in NYC is on the calendar for 2009, the famous street surrealist of Sao Paolo brings an impressive collection of drawings, paintings and installations through San Francisco in order to formally introduce himself to American audiences.

Ethos’ unique blend of conscious and unconscious depicts a remedy for struggle within South America’s concrete jungle. The strain of urban anxiety is often visible in the large, deep set black eyes that reside within the tired faces of his characters. Formulated within a mind that rarely rests, these surrealistic creatures exist in a perpetual state of struggle as they have traveled from the artist’s subconscious to the waking world of the general public. The excessive and meticulous detail that is the hallmark of Ethos’ work is sure to transport the viewer to an examination of one’s own waking dream.

FELIZES: Anderson Resende

Anderson Resende’s rare technical quality and extremely energetic drawing portrays bodies bearing the marks of living. His drawings are like engravings, the paper scored with the same precision and power. Each drawing is unique, with no sketch or draft. The overlapping gestural features in Nanking ink create marks as definitive as the writing of time aging the body. Each line tells a story and leaves a wrinkle on the surface of the paper.  Resende portrays the outside, but shows us what is inside. He draws “aging” to look at “experience,” “death” to address “immateriality” and “body” to talk about “spirit.” The impact of his works is not in the theme, but in the meaning, as profound as the eyes of the figures portrayed. Figures showing vivid images charged
with the age of the soul. Happy because they have smiled and wept— liberated are those who do not fear death.