At ArPa 2024, Millan presents Dois tempos [Two Times], exhibiting new works by Felipe Cohen and Vanderlei Lopes. The solo shows are themed on both artists’ perceptions of the passage of time. On June 26th and 27th, Cohen addresses the theme in works that oscillate between representation and abstraction, with paintings of geometricized landscapes and objects in a reflective game of light and shadow. From the 28th to the 30th of June, Vanderlei Lopes occupies the booth with a series of sculptures that suggest the suspension of time, perpetuating the moment the flow of a golden bronze “leak” bursts through the walls.

Vanderlei Lopes

At ArPa 2024, Vanderlei Lopes presents new works from his renowned series Vazamentos [Leaks], in which polished bronze sculptures represent a golden liquid flowing through holes in the walls. The works dialog openly with the architecture and allude to a wide range of polarities, such as reality and fiction, the perpetual and the mutable, the mundane and the extraordinary.

The bronze materializes in the form of residue, close to the floor and the wall, bursting into the environment through holes, corners, and gaps. Presented together for the first time, these works seek to superimpose their perpetual flow onto the flows that they have become a part of — whether the flow of the booth at the fair, of a museum, or a residential environment — as though they are on the verge of filling and flooding the exhibition space.

Therefore, they only become a “work” when they are installed in the houses of their collectors or museums, as the artist explains: “In these spaces, they mirror their environment, their flows are witness to a moment in life.” Questions of intimacy, affection, taste, or situations of power are, in a sense, imprinted on the surfaces of these works.

“The reflection quality of cast bronze as an ambiguous character in Vanderlei Lopes’ work,” according to Heloisa Espada, in a text for the artist’s solo show at Millan in 2023, “The pieces in the Vazamentos series, for example, which he started making in 2010, ironize the association between gold and wealth. On the other hand, they mirror the environment they are inserted in and those who observe them. (…) The works put the visitor in the position of a Narcissus, an example of the relationship between art and spectator, characterized by seduction and estrangement, identification and refusal, unease and pleasure.”

Vanderlei Lopes (1973, Terra Boa, PR, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo. His solo projects include exhibitions at Millan (São Paulo, 2023), Capela do Morumbi (São Paulo, 2017), and MAM Rio de Janeiro (2014). He has also been featured in group shows at institutions including the Bienal de Arte Paiz (Guatemala, 2021), MuBe (São Paulo, 2019), Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2015), Sesc 24 de Maio (São Paulo, 2017), and the 7th Bienal de Mercosul (Porto Alegre, 2009), among others. His work is included in important public collections, such as MAM São Paulo, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, MAC-USP (São Paulo), MAM Rio de Janeiro, MAR (Rio de Janeiro), the Instituto Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), and the Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (Ribeirão Preto), among others.