RIO DE JANEIRO .- Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro is presenting The Sea, The River, The Stone, the first solo exhibition by Pernambuco-based artist Marcelo Silveira in Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by a critical text by Daniela Name. The artist, whose career spans over 40 years, showcases both recent creations and historical works, providing a broader overview of his trajectory.
One of the primary materials Silveira employs in his works is cajacatinga wood, a tree native to the Atlantic Forest. This wood was extensively used in sugar mills in the southern region of Pernambuco due to its resistance to water, humidity, and fire. Over time, sugarcane plantations and mills gave way to pastures, leaving only the stumps of these trees behind. It was through these remnants that the artist first encountered the material. In this exhibition, cajacatinga wood forms the basis of works from the Peles, Bolofote, and Sementes series. While Peles represents a well-known sequence of works by Silveira, Bolofote and Sementes are more recent developments of his practice using cajacatinga wood.
Bolofote references a colloquial expression from Silveira’s home state of Pernambuco, used to describe something misshapen. Though made of wood, these pieces exhibit a fluid, malleable appearance: “It’s a practice of organizing space, of building spontaneously. I wear the wood down significantly, and in this series, for the first time, I add and wear away simultaneously.”
Sementes consists of small pieces of cajacatinga wood resembling seeds, grouped into a single volume. According to the artist, “This series stems from experiments I conducted with leftover wood fragments. The first seed came from assembling forgotten materials. For the second, I added something more, and the third was entirely new. Making these is an infernal task,” he remarks. “The seed is the origin; it represents the multiplication of the species. It’s the sprouting, the return to origins. I’m constantly going back—back to the canvas, to research on seeds, to the wood I’ve used for years. I use roots, scraps, and I want these trees to return, to encounter them more frequently and regularly. The seeds are always in my mind,” he concludes.
Another series featured in the exhibition is Hotel Solidão, developed from a collection of Brazilian editions of Grande Hotel magazine, dating from 1947 to 1955. Silveira uses the covers and back covers of the magazine, donating the inner pages to other artists. The images, created by Italian illustrators, are meticulously selected, cleaned, cut, and mounted on cardstock in various compositions. These pieces captivate viewers with their peculiar colors and the physicality of the work, emphasizing the multiple layers of paper arranged within.
The so-called Cabeludas consist of a series of works Silveira began in 2006. These suspended structures made of stainless steel incorporate bovine leather and horsehair, the latter collected through horse grooming practices similar to wig-making. The collected strands are sorted, cleaned, aligned by length, organized, and some are dyed. “The dialogue in my work always involves the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional planes, as well as the intersection of painting and sculpture within space. This series speaks deeply about painting,” says Silveira. Another pictorial quality of the Cabeludas lies in their connection to horsehair brushes and the gradient tones of the strands. “They emerge from the attempt to organize, to revisit, older works. All these things return,” explains the artist.
Thus, The Sea, The River, The Stone brings together works in which Marcelo Silveira draws from a repertoire of materials deeply tied to Brazilian contexts. Through artisanal processes, he explores materialities, repositions contexts, and challenges the viewer’s perception.
