Maxwell Alexandre completely transforms the space at Almeida & Dale Fradique in pintor preto, figuração branca. (Black painter, white figuration), his first solo show at the gallery. The show results from conceptual and plastic developments of two iconic sets of artworks: Clube (Club), first shown at the Rio de Janeiro Historical Museum (2024), and Cubo Branco (White Cube), known for Its Galeria n.2 (Gallery n.2), a piece created for the 36th São Paulo Art Biennial (2025).
The Clube (Club) series was initiated in 2020, when Maxwell started going to Clube de Regatas do Flamengo in Gávea, an affluent Rio de Janeiro neighborhood adjoining Rocinha, the favela the artist was born and raised in. On the club grounds, Maxwell turned his attention to white bodies, a turning point in his career — hitherto marked by the exclusive portrayal of black people —, culminating in the notion of “white figuration,” a trademark of this new exhibit.
The club’s tall walls provide members and frequenters with an “oasis”— seemingly cut off from the contradictions and complexities of the surroundings, yet laying bare the power structures involved in peaceful scenes of people sunbathing and playing in the pool.
In Maxwell’s work, the club becomes a metaphor for every space “of wellbeing, leisure, bounty, safety, tranquility, good architecture, good design, good art, good food,” the artist writes; and the pictorial genre of “white figuration” becomes a conceptual operation to highlight whiteness in the field of painting and in art history. Maxwell emphasizes: “If there is black figuration, then there must be white figuration.”
Through this movement, Maxwell Alexandre approaches his own role as an artist. He has garnered international recognition for his Pardo é Papel (Brown is Paper) and Novo Poder (New Power) series, respectively portraying day-to-day scenes in the favela and black people in spaces of power. In these new pieces, Maxwell dislocates white bodies from the locus of neutrality, putting into question a centuries-old relationship in art history between the black painter and the object of the painting, white figuration.
The Clube (Club) series denaturalizes the representation of the white male in painting, reconfiguring the relationship of alterity in the images. And through the presumed neutrality of the White Cube, Maxwell points out to us certain core values within the arts system.
No one calls the representation of the white male white figuration. Everyone knows the representation of the white male in painting simply as figuration. The most exhausted, canonized genre in art history is neutral; it is yet to be categorized. Seeing as the representation of the white male is regarded as the avatar of humanity, it could not have been categorized and racialized.
Maxwell Alexandre
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