Os Gêmeos, In High Seas Everybody Flies, 2008. Courtesy of the artists
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Os Gêmeos, Untitled, 2005. Courtesy of the artists
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Os Gêmeos, Back in the Days, 2008. Courtesy of the artists
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Os Gêmeos, Untitled, 2008. Courtesy of the artists
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Os Gêmeos, Vertigem, Museu de Arte Brasileira (MAB) in São Paulo, 2009. Exhibition view. Photo Wagner Avancini
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“Graffiti art in the Rococo phase” is what New York Times critic Roberta Smith called the works of Os Gêmeos (The twins). This August, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA),
Boston, presents the work of the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo
Pandolfo in their first U.S. solo museum show, sponsored by Deutsche Bank. Like Banksy and Shepard Fairey,
these so-called street artists have made the leap into established
museums. They have been working on their fantastic, imagistic world
since 1987, which bounces high against low and speaks both to the art
world and the average member of the public. Os Gêmeos’s visual
vocabulary is exuberant and irresistible: dreams and everyday
impressions inspire its colorful murals, populated with yellow figures,
or huge installations of heads that are furnished like rooms. In these
surreal paintings and installations, Os Gêmeos absorb everything from
New York’s urban chaotic energy to folk art, bright colors, patterns,
and Brazilian mythology. The brothers photograph people in their
surroundings and then immortalize them in their works: kids and artists
from São Paulo’s graffiti scene, musicians, carnivals, and processions.
Os Gêmeos’s murals can be seen in Berlin and Heerlen, Netherlands, as well as on the facade of the Tate Modern,
London. In New York, the pair realized a large-scale mural in 2010 on
the corner of Bowery and Houston Streets—a prominent location where Keith Haring’s colorful figures danced in 1982. The Brazilians’ tableau quotes various influences, including Hieronymus Bosch, M. C. Escher, and the tags of Dash Snow, an enfant terrible of the New York art world who had died shortly before and to whom the work is dedicated.
Now,
at the ICA, Os Gêmeos’s work can be experienced in all its variety:
paintings, sculptures, a gigantic accessible “car head,” and a mural
with an interactive sound installation involving 65 painted speakers
that communicate to the visitor. And the twins will also be busy in the
space of city, too: in the fall, while the exhibition is on view, they
will work on a large mural in the streets of Boston.
Os Gêmeos
August 1–November 25, 2012
ICA Boston
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