Iran do Espírito Santo

Mazzoleni, London is proud to present an exhibition featuring the works of Iran do Espírito Santo, marking his return to London after a decade. The exhibition showcases two distinct bodies of work: a collection of watercolours and a series of sculptures. Exploring the theme of domesticity, the exhibition delves into concepts of enclosure, disclosure, light, chance, and absence.

Born in 1963 in Mococa, Brazil, Espírito Santo initially worked as an architect and photographer's assistant, specialising in black and white photography. His artistic journey evolved alongside his architectural background, heavily influenced by Brazilian modernist architecture and the urban landscape of São Paulo. This influence is palpable in his work, where the organised geometry of modernist structures translates into the precise aesthetic of his compositions, echoing his experiences in black and white photography.

At Mazzoleni, Espírito Santo presents a series of sculptures crafted from distinct materials such as stone, glass, and metal. These sculptures intricately replicate real objects in shape and proportion while playing with scale and materiality. The artist's fascination lies in exploring ordinary objects often overlooked due to their banality, using materials to merge tangibility with conceptual depth. For instance, "Luz Negra" (2022) elevates the hyperreal finishing of a light bulb into an auratic icon, blurring the lines between material density and image quality.

Alongside the sculptures, a selection of watercolours on paper further elucidates the nuances of Espírito Santo's practice. These works, born from meticulous observations of everyday objects, aim to awaken viewers from habitual indifference and highlight the beauty inherent in the mechanics of human existence. Controlled and contained, the watercolours, like the sculptures, are composed of basic geometric forms that coalesce to form recognisable signs.

Espírito Santo's oeuvre reconciles abstraction and concreteness, mirroring the human condition's duality of concrete reality and abstract thinking. Through his exploration of form, materiality, and perception, he invites viewers to reconsider the ordinary and perceive the profound within the mundane.

Iran do Espírito Santo portrait © Leo Faria

Iran do Espírito Santo was born in Mococa, Brazil in 1963. Often working on an
ambitious scale, he wryly subverts the Minimalist tradition through his abstracted
sculptures of familiar everyday objects made strange by their disorientating size and
incongruous materials, such as granite, glass, steel, copper or stone. These sculptural
works strip away all extraneous de...

Iran do Espírito Santo was born in Mococa, Brazil in 1963. Often working on an
ambitious scale, he wryly subverts the Minimalist tradition through his abstracted
sculptures of familiar everyday objects made strange by their disorientating size and
incongruous materials, such as granite, glass, steel, copper or stone. These sculptural
works strip away all extraneous detail, emphasizing the essential line and form of the
object. This rigorous simplicity carries through to his demanding wall drawings in paint
and sgraffito that transform the entire gallery through subtle gradations of tone and
hypnotic repetition of pattern but require many weeks to complete. It was a combination
of these two aspects of his practice which comprised the artist’s first UK solo exhibition,
at Ingleby Gallery during Edinburgh Art Festival 2010. In the past two decades, Iran do
Espírito Santo has received much international acclaim and his works have been
exhibited widely in museums and galleries worldwide, and are included in the collections
of many prominent museums. In the past two decades, Iran do Espírito Santo has
received much international acclaim and his works have been exhibited widely in
museums and galleries worldwide, and are included in the collections of many prominent
museums such as: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art,
San Francisco, MAXXI, Rome, IMMA, Dublin and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San
Diego. He has also made substantial contributions to the Venice Biennale (1999 and
2007), the Bienal de São Paulo (1987), and the Istanbul Biennal (2000). Recent
exhibitions have included Reflexivos at Oi Futuro, Brazil (2019) and Chosen Memories -
Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond,
MoMA, USA (2023).